HOLLYWOOD - Super Bowl weekend saw a third first Down on the box office gridiron as Black Hawk Down topped the chart again with $11.5 million. Despite Hollywood's annual run in with Super Bowl Sunday, ticket sales were basically flat with this weekend last year, which did not include the Super Bowl. Key films -- those grossing $500,000 or more -- did nearly $97 million, up a marginal 0.07 percent from last year's $96.9 million. Business was up about 5.3 percent from last year's Super Bowl weekend, which fell a week earlier (Jan. 26-28) and saw key films total $92.1 million.
Neither of this weekend's wide openings, Slackers and Birthday Girl, had anything to celebrate, but a team of holdovers held the box office line. Snow Dogs, A Walk To Remember, The Count Of Monte Cristo and A Beautiful Mind all scored well enough to wear Top Five uniforms.
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Revolution Studios and Jerry Bruckheimer Films' R rated drama Black Hawk Down scored a third first place victory in its sixth week of release via Columbia Pictures with a still muscular ESTIMATED $11.5 million (-32%) at 3,143 theaters (+42 theaters; $3,659 per theater). Its cume is approximately $75.5 million.
Directed by Ridley Scott, it stars Josh Hartnett.
"Number one three weeks in a row and now getting within striking distance of the $100 million mark," Sony Pictures Entertainment worldwide marketing & distribution president Jeff Blake said Sunday morning.
"Everything continues to go quite well. A very respectable hold even accounting for an anticipated hit on Sunday by the Super Bowl. We're just looking to continued good openings around the world and looking forward to a continued good performance and, perhaps, some good news on Feb. 12 (in terms of Oscar nominations)."
Where is it heading? "I think a lot depends on whether we get in the Oscar nominations (list of) contenders," Blake replied. "If it just kept going as it's going you'd certainly anticipate something in the neighborhood of $115-125 million, but (it will help) if it continues to take on a little added life beyond the normal moviegoing issues.
"President Bush has now seen it at Camp David and Secretary of Defense (Donald) Rumsfeld has seen it and really complimented it. As I understand it, it was requested and is being sent to the troops in Afghanistan. So aside from the movie news, it's also (making mainstream news reports). Whenever that happens, it becomes a little hard to predict (where a film will get to). Maybe in strictly movie terms you'd say to yourself, $115-125 million. But it seems like a lot of other things are going on -- both in the normal movie range and, perhaps, outside of it."
Asked about the Super Bowl's effect on the box office, Blake explained, "We're predicting a 65 percent drop on Sunday. And that would be the high side of (what would be) normal. We're acknowledging that we certainly have a lot of male adults watching this movie who will be watching the Super Bowl. I think the normal range of drop for the Super Bowl is, at best, 50 percent off and we're anticipating a drop in the mid-60 percents.
