Weekend Box Office

What could possibly go wrong, diving in caves for numbers?

Superbowl weekend essentially cuts the potential box office by a third, and programming movies for it is an interesting challenge. Do you just write off the male audience and open movies that appeal to women? Or do you save those movies for Valentine's Day? As it turns out you split the difference, and hope that men will take out their dates on Friday and Saturday, to make up for the fact that they will be completely unavailable on Sunday.

Hence the two movies that opened in the top ten this weekend. At #2 it was Sanctum, which kinda tanked despite being in 3D and boasting plenty of wet cave action. $9 million! That ain't nothing! I wonder if the Freudian signifigance of being trapped by a wet dark cave turned off filmgoers; or maybe they thought it was the other one about the guy who chewed off his own arm in a cave.

#1 saw the arrival of The Roommate, which made $15 million. It's kind of creepy seeing how much this movie wants to be Single White Female, copying its movements, dressing up like it, even stealing its lipstick. But it's still only a cheap little star-power-less echo of that movie. I hope it gets its comeuppance!