Box Office: Tarantino’s ‘Basterds’ Score a Glourious $37 Million

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 23, 2009

Well, it was indeed a “Glourious” weekend for Quentin Tarantino at the box office. Not only did Inglourious Basterds win the weekend, but it scored a higher-than-expected $37.6 million! What’s more, this is the best opening for a Tarantino movie ever, topping Kill Bill: Vol. 2 which opened at $25 million.

I get a laugh reading some of the stuff out there, particularly Nikki Finke’s post at her site that basically implied this movie saved the Weinstein Company’s bacon — as if this was going to be some sure train wreck waiting to happen. I gotta say — never bet against Quentin Tarantino, at least not too often. I know he has some detractors out there who think he’s overrated, and Grindhouse was a flop to be sure, but Tarantino has enough talent and enough fans to pull out out of the hat from time to time. Besides, this movie had been hyped to death for months. It HAD to do well.

The movie also scored at the international box office: $27.5 million from 22 territories, including number one finishes in France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

(In other news, Brad Pitt can brag to Angelina Jolie about being at the top of the box office again. So expect the tabloids to be reporting more tension in the relationship and so on.)

Also, the sink-or-swim trend continues in Hollywood this week, as we once again see one new release outperforming at the top while a whole host of other new releases flop completely. Shorts brought in only $6.6 million, which looks really good in comparison to Post Grad which took only $2.8 million! As for that one-week-only X Games 3D The Movie, it brought in a miserable $800,000. So thanks to these three movies, my box office predictions all went up in smoke again. So what else is new?!

The results:

1. Inglourious Basterds – $37,602,000
2. District 9 – $18,900,000
3. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra – $12,500,000
4. The Time Traveler’s Wife – $10,025,000
5. Julie & Julia – $9,000,000
6. Shorts – $6,600,000
7. G-Force – $4,205,000
8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – $3,515,000
9. The Ugly Truth – $2,850,000
10. Post Grad – $2,800,000

So that about does it for this weekend! See you later this week for more box office predictions here at the Reject Report!

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