The Reject Report Rings in The New Year

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on January 2, 2009

rr-newyear

It’s 2009 here at the Reject Report! I wish I had more to report this weekend, as it looks as if we are in for a very quiet time at the theaters on this, the first weekend of Throwaway Season.

This first weekend of 2009 is going to be a status quo one all the way at the box office, it looks like. There’s only a couple of new releases, Defiance and Good, and they are in very limited release (two theaters each). So there really isn’t too much to report this weekend.

It sure looks like Marley and Me will be the number one movie again. Here’s a rundown of what I see happening.

1. Marley & Me	$25 million
2. Bedtime Stories	$18 million
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button	$17 million
4. Valkyrie	$15 million
5. Yes Man	$9.5 million
6. Seven Pounds	$7.5 million
7. The Tale of Despereaux	$5.5 million
8. The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)	$4.5 million
9. The Spirit	$3.5 million
10. Doubt	$3.4 million

So that is what we are looking at for the start of Throwaway Season — that vast-wasteland period of time where Hollywood dumps romantic comedies and all the flicks that didn’t test well with audiences. The Oscar-season movies have all been released, and the big blockbusters are done for a while. The only real blockbuster on the horizon is Watchmen, and we still don’t know whether that movie, slated for March, will be released on time because of the ongoing Fox-Warner Bros. litigation. I am sure that bored newspaper editors out there will be assigning a lot of stories about how “the recession has hit the theaters” and how there are so many flops at the theaters, but the truth is that this is ALWAYS a down time. People want to stay home and watch the NFL playoffs! North Americans have their priorities straight.

We’ll be back at weekend’s end to give you the final totals of what looks to be a totally boring weekend here at the Reject Report.