Box Office

Box Office: Jumper Teleports to the Top

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on February 18, 2008

Welcome to the President’s Day weekend edition of the Reject Update. Well, all the numbers for the whole holiday weekend are not in yet — the Monday numbers have yet to come in — but we do know who the box-office champ is going to be. Jumper has raked in $27 million for the Friday-Sunday period and is expected to hit $38 million for the five days from Thursday to Monday. The two movies fighting for second place are Step Up 2 The Streets and The Spiderwick Chronicles, both running at $19 million. So far it looks as if Step Up 2 has exceeded expectations while Spiderwick underperformed.

Yet again, the people of the United States are fools. Jumper is the box office champion despite running at 16 per cent at Rotten Tomatoes! That’s almost as bad as the 10 per cent or so that Fool’s Gold has been getting. The critics have been almost totally hostile and word of mouth has been terrible, but Fool’s Gold still made $13 million this weekend. Step Up 2 the Streets got only 28 per cent from Rotten Tomatoes, yet it, too, is doing decent business. I guess most American moviegoers can’t help it — they have bad taste in movies.

Here is a rundown on the three-day weekend numbers so far, courtesy of Box Office Mojo:

1 Jumper Fox $27,225,000
2 Step Up 2 the Streets BV $19,666,000
3 The Spiderwick Chronicles Par. $19,080,000
4 Fool’s Gold WB $13,080,000
5 Definitely, Maybe Uni. $9,685,000
6 Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins Uni. $8,880,000
7 Juno FoxS $4,625,000
8 The Bucket List WB $4,105,000
9 Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour BV $3,289,000
10 27 Dresses Fox $3,175,000

Now, here are the Thursday night numbers. Again, courtesy of Box Office Mojo:

1 Jumper Fox $6,625,015
2 Step Up 2 the Streets BV $6,600,460
3 Fool’s Gold WB $3,552,404
4 Definitely, Maybe Uni. $3,119,205
5 The Spiderwick Chronicles Par. $2,308,744
6 Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins Uni. $1,956,990
7 Juno FoxS $802,327
8 The Bucket List WB $788,355
9 The Eye Lionsgate $757,056
10 27 Dresses Fox $621,193

I should talk about U2 3D, which has been out in limited release for some weeks now. This movie was originally supposed to have gone wide with an expanded release on the 15th, and these plans were announced a while ago. But for some reason this movie was only shown in 42 theaters and made $450,000 this weekend. So I don’t know what the heck is happening with this release. I read that they were now planning to go wide now with an international release on the 22nd, but I don’t know whether that includes the USA or what is going on. I’m just going to shut up about U2 3D until I get more information about what the plans are for an expanded wide release. Personally, I think that flick’s hopes of beating Hannah Montana for the 3-D title could be down the drain. Suffice it to say that your best bet for seeing that movie right now is to find the largest city you can get to, and try your luck there.

That is your box office report to this point and I plan to be back with Monday’s President’s Day numbers. Stay tuned for that here at The Reject Report.