Bond And <i>Toy Story</i> Battle On
Two weekends ago set a new record at the box office. Last weekend's top five films have only one change, reports Gail O'Neill for The Early Show. And Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly's assistant managing editor, looks at the winners and losers of the fall season.
The weekend after Thanksgiving is when Christmas shopping starts in full force. Box office numbers drop significantly, and no new films go into wide release.
While the numbers may be a lot lower, last weekend's top five has only one change.
| LAST WEEKEND'S TOP FIVE FILMS | |||
| 1. | Toy Story 2 | $28.3 million | |
| 2. | The World Is Not Enough | $10.6 million | |
| 3. | End of Days | $9.7 million | |
| 4. | Sleepy Hollow | $9.0 million | 5. | The Bone Collector | $3.14 million |
Toy Story 2 remains at the No. 1 spot with $28 million in box office returns. It broke the $100 million mark in only 10 days.
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The World Is Not Enough, End Of Days, and Sleepy Hollow each lost half of their audience. And The Bone Collector returns to the top five.
Here are some of the numbers for the fall season's box office returns:
| FALL WINNERS | ESTIMATED BUDGET | BOX OFFICE TOTAL |
| Double Jeopardy | $45 million | $112.9 million |
| American Beauty | $15 million | $67 million |
| Pokemon: The First Movie | $5 million | $80.6 million |
| The Bone Collector | $45 million | $58 million |
Double Jeopardy was the big winner of the fall, taking in more than $112 million, proving that a blockbuster today must appeal to both men and women.
"If you have a genre like the thriller or the suspense film that men like, but a plot line and stars that women like - and I think Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones both fit into that category - you've got a movie that appeals to all audiences," says Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly assistant managing editor.
American Beauty seemed to come out of nowhere. Made for only $15 million, it has taken in more than $65 million so far.
"What they didn't expect was that moviegoers would connect so much with this very, very strange dark, creepy story of a family in turmoil," notes Harris. "I mean, you know, American Beauty is Hollywood goes indie, but it proves that maybe moviegoers are already more indie than Hollywood is."
"Every fall or every spring there seems to be one movie that two weeks before it comes out, you've never heard of it. And suddenly it's a complete blockbuster, and then two weeks after it comes out, it's over, and that was Pokemon this ear," he adds.
It may not have had blockbuster numbers, but The Bone Collector has held on, putting Denzel Washington back on top.
"We might not have seen Denzel for a while as someone who was making mainstream movies that people could really enjoy," Harris explains.
"When he's gone toward a kind of popular movie like Fallen or Virtuosity, the results often have not been that good. This is the first time in a while that he's made a straight-ahead thriller that's clicked with audiences," Harris says.
Washington may have clicked with audiences, but other A-list actors can't claim the same thing.
Here are some of the cinematic losers of the fall:
| FALL LOSERS | ESTIMATED BUDGET | BOX OFFICE TOTAL |
| Random Hearts | $74 million | $31 million |
| For the Love of the Game | $50 million | $35.3 million |
| Fight Club | $68 million | $35.3 million |
"Random Hearts won't hurt Harrison Ford. But it reminds you yet again, that when he tries to make a romantic film, it just doesn't work," he says.
"Kevin Costner is on the A-minus list right now. And it's really time to stop looking for star vehicles and start looking for good scripts, good co-stars," says Harris.
"Brad Pitt is another of those kind of hallucination movie stars. He seems like a movie star; he acts like a movie star; he dates like a movie star. But when you look at his box office track record, he's not a movie star," he notes.
"Coming out of this fall, suddenly we are looking at people like Kevin Spacey and Ashley Judd and Annette Benning - people who chose wisely, people who made good decisions," according to Harris.
"And we saw big stars like Kevin Costner and Brad Pitt, and even people like Meryl Streep, make the wrong decsion and fall hard," he adds.
Last weekend's box office performance of Arnold Schwarzenegger shows he may be falling hard. Next week, we'll see how Tom Hanks fares with The Green Mile.
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