'Samurai' Slices Into Box Office
As usual, Tom Cruise's latest movie debuted at No. 1.
"The Last Samurai" cut down the competition with $24.4 million in ticket sales, reports Jess Cagle, The Early Show entertainment correspondent and People magazine senior editor. Despite poor reviews, Jessica Alba's new movie "Honey," about an aspiring hip-hop dancer, came in second with $14 million. And Eddie Murphy's movie "The Haunted Mansion" took in over $9 million for a third-place finish, according to Hollywood.com.
In the "The Last Samurai," Cruise plays a downtrodden Civil War veteran who reclaims honor by forging a bond with samurai warriors – despite having been brought to Japan to quash their rebellion by training a mercenary army for the Japanese emperor.
The movie's debut weekend fell short of the records set by some of his Cruise's other recent films, such as the $35.6 million debut for "Minority Report" and the $57.8 million opening of "Mission: Impossible II."
"Samurai," which is nearly two-and-a-half hours long, had a similar opening gross to "Vanilla Sky," which collected $25 million in its first weekend.
"If you're Tom Cruise," Cagle said, "it's a low number. There were a couple of problems with the movie. I think if it weren't for the snowstorm blanketing the eastern seaboard, it would have made about $29 million, which would have been good. Plus it was R-rated, which cut down on teens and this is a hard movie to sell to women because they see a guy with a sword in the ad and even though it's Tom Cruise, it takes some convincing. I think word-of-mouth has to get out of there."
Nevertheless, Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations noted, "It's almost a lock that every time he opens a movie it comes in at No. 1. This guy is box-office insurance personified."
Cagle pointed out, "He has a loyal audience and one of the few movie stars who can get people over 30 years old to leave their house on opening weekend and go see a movie, especially women."
Reviews for the film were mixed. Personally, Cagle said he loved it. He said, "You had people calling it silly, people calling it a masterpiece. It was fascinating to go read the reviews. I really liked it. It really is a movie that is about something. And you don't see many movies like that come out of a big studio with a big star."
The Jessica Alba aspiring-dancer melodrama "Honey," the only other new movie opening in wide release, ranked second this weekend with $14 million despite generally poor reviews, some of which compared its story to the infamous Mariah Carey bomb "Glitter."
It's a strong opening for the former star of TV's "Dark Angel."
Cagle said "She has a big following from television, especially with young women. It made this movie. It's basically a hip-hop flash dance. And, no, it did not get good reviews, but it is very, very true to a very tried and true formula."
Distributor Universal Pictures said the audience for "Honey" was about 75 percent under 21 and 74 percent female. That proved to be wise counter programming against "Samurai," which had audiences skewing older and predominantly male, Dergarabedian said. "Universal selected just the right movie to go up against 'The Last Samurai,' the two movies couldn't be more different," he said.
"Cat In The Hat," which had been the No.1 movie over the last two weeks, had a precipitous drop over the last weekend.
Cagle said, "The amazing thing, it was No. 1 two weeks in a row before it fell to the bottom of the heap this time. It was the worst-reviewed movie of the year. Just completely savage reviews."
So far, "Cat" has earned a total of $85.5 million, according to Universal Pictures, placing it far behind the studio's 2000 Jim Carrey comedy "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas," which had collected about $172 million at the same point in its release. "Grinch" ultimately earned $260 million by the end of its run.
In only 126 theaters, a re-release of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" added $431,000 to that film's total gross, bringing it to $313.8 million. New Line Cinema is reissuing the previous two films to a handful of theaters in advance of the Dec. 17 debut of the final "Rings" installment: "The Return of the King." This coming week, "The Two Towers" will be in theaters again.
There's a movie-going vacuum that usually follows the weekend after the Thanksgiving holiday, and many of the top holdover movies saw ticket sales drop by more than 60 percent this weekend.
Snowfall in the northeastern states may also have kept people at home and away from theaters.
Nonetheless, the overall box-office was up about 34 percent. The top 12 movies took in $91.8 million from Friday to Sunday compared to $68.5 million from the same weekend last year, when "Die Another Day" and "Analyze That" topped the box-office.
The following are the numbers according to Hollywood.com:
- "The Last Samurai," $24.4 million.
- "Honey," $14 million.
- "The Haunted Mansion," $9.5 million
- "Elf," $8.1 million.
- "Dr. Seuss' the Cat in the Hat," $7.3 million.
- "Bad Santa," $7 million.
- "Gothika," $5.3 million.
- "The Missing," $4.4 million.
- "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," $3.8
million. - "Love Actually," $3.7 million.