Box Office: The Final Destination Kills the Competition

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 31, 2009

Welcome to the box office edition of the Reject Report again. It turned out my premonition about who would finish first at the box office this weekend was pretty accurate, as The Final Destination took the top spot with a haul of $28 million. That was a little higher than expected.

What was NOT expected was the somewhat low total for Halloween II, which came in at $17.4 million. That’s a few million lower than what was expected. Also, it finished in third place, which was also one spot lower than expected. Instead, Inglourious Basterds hung in there with a haul of $20 million to take the runner-up spot this week.

It seems obvious to me what happened to Halloween II: audiences had to make a choice between two gory movies, so they chose The Final Destination. Plus, the spiked-up 3D ticket prices had to help their money totals. Maybe this wasn’t so unexpected a result, then. You had two horror movies going at it, and one of them had to lose — and the trend all year has been one where a single movie cleans up while all the rest of the new releases do worse business than expected. (Taking Woodstock didn’t do well either, by the way, hauling in $3.7 million.)

Clearly, the whining and bitching will be on over at the Weinstein Company over their idiot decision to roll out Halloween II this weekend against both another horror movie and their own Inglourious Basterds release. Something’s amiss in the decision-making, folks. Hey, guys, next time Rob Zombie does a Halloween movie, why don’t you release it in October?

The results:

1. The Final Destination – $28,335,000
2. Inglourious Basterds – $20,041,000
3. Halloween II (2009) – $17,405,000
4. District 9 – $10,700,000
5. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra – $8,000,000
6. Julie & Julia – $7,400,000
7. The Time Traveler’s Wife – $6,745,000
8. Shorts – $4,870,000
9. Taking Woodstock – $3,749,000
10. G-Force – $2,845,000

I wish I had more to say, but as you can tell, it wasn’t the most earth-shattering weekend at theaters — and besides, I’m on vacation and want to spend the rest of the day goofing off and enjoying what is left of August. Feel free to leave your comments as to what you thought about this box office “death match.” Me, I’m going to just chill out.

See you later this week for more box office predictions here at the Reject Report!

Read more articles by John Cairns