North American box office: gone to the dogs with ‘Marley & Me’

Now, if we don’t include Christmas Day, Bedtime Stories edges out Benjamin Button over the three-day weekend, $27.5 million to $26.9 million. But I don’t see why we shouldn’t count Christmas Day when we count other weekends extended by a holiday. So there.

Box Office Mojo notes that this is one of the strongest Christmases on record: Marley, for one, broke the Christmas Day record. But all the top five did extraordinarily well, including Yes Man, which saw only a minuscule drop over the weekend prior.

And then came Monday the 29th and Tuesday the 30th, during which Marley took in a little over $7 million on each day, Stories a little over $6 million on each day, Benjamin around $5 million each day, Valkyrie around $4 million each day, and Yes Man around $3.5 million each day. These are amazing numbers, when weekend figures have lately hovered around $1 million for just the top film alone.

Kids are off school. Adults are off work -- some voluntarily, some not so much. All these movies are pretty escapist. I know that I love to get away at the movies -- I think this weekend and this week shows that a lot of other people are trying to forget their troubles at the movies at the moment, too.

Not that more serious movies were being ignored. Over the three-day weekend, per-screen averages for the limited-release awards contenders were huge:

Revolutionary Road: $63,304 (on each of 3 screens)
Gran Torino: $27,652 (84 screens)
The Wrestler: $21,529 (18 screens)
Last Chance Harvey: $16,210 (6 screens)
Che: $15,900 (2 screens)
Waltz with Bashir: $10,004 (5 screens)

For comparison’s sake, Marley’s per-screen was $10,448 (at each of 3,480 venues).

Oh, and The Spirit? It was way down at No. 9 for the three-day weekend, picking up $6.5 million. That’s not too bad, considering the competition it was facing... but it’s also not so great, considering that that competition didn’t really include much of geek interest. Doh!

[numbers via Box Office Mojo]