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Mel's Apocalypto: Bloody Good Business
2006-12-12
Onscreen in Apocalypto, Mel Gibson serves up plenty of severed heads. Offscreen, he's content with dicing up the competition. Slaughter won out over Christmas cheer, as Gibson's blood-soaked, R-rated Mayan drama opened with $15 million to top the dance-happy penguins of Happy Feet ($12.9 million, second place) and the new star-studded chick flick The Holiday ($12.8 million, third place), according to final studio figures Monday. Meanwhile, the weekend's other two wide releases, Blood Diamond and Unaccompanied Minors, finished further down the charts. The Leonardo DiCaprio-powered Blood Diamond opened with $8.6 million in fifth place (behind Casino Royale's $8.9 million), and Unaccompanied Minors entered in seventh with $5.8 million (trailing Déjà Vu's $6 million). Apocalypto did solid business in spite of itself. Featuring a virtually unknown cast speaking in Mayan dialects, the film received grudging respect from critics, who praised its visual power but took pains to stress the ultraviolent content of the action drama about a man trying to save himself and his family from a bloodthirsty rival tribe. The film's top-ranked opening also seems to suggest that distributor Disney managed to overcome some of the Gibson backlash stirred up by his notorious DUI meltdown. "Disney was very smart about not shying away from the Mel factor. It was the Mel factor that made the movie number one. He's a catalyst from many people's movie choices," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of the new box-office tracking company Media by Numbers. Dergarabedian adds that the mixed reviews may have created a climate in which people "wanted to be able to make their own decision about the movie...so they could talk about it around the office water cooler." Disney's distribution chief Chuck Viane told Reuters that Gibson's headline-grabbing rant had "literally never been an issue" with theater owners. Unspooling in 2,465 locations, the movie averaged $6,087 per site and attracted an audience that was 60 percent male. It wasn't in the same league as Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which earned $83.3 million its first weekend in 2004 and eventually grossed $370.2 million domestically. However, Apocalypto performed better than Braveheart, which Gibson directed and starred in. The historical drama opened in 1995 with $9.9 million before eventually earning $75.6 million domestically and winning five Oscars, including Best Director for Gibson and Best Picture. The Holiday averaged $4,896 at 2,610 sites, from an audience that was 65 percent female. Directed by Nancy Meyers, the Sony release stars Kate Winslet as a heartsick British journalist sent to the U.S., where she ends up with an oddball composer (Jack Black) and relocated Cameron Diaz's heart-hardened Hollywood producer to jolly old England, where she ends up with Winslet's glamorous brother (Jude Law). Warners' R-rated Blood Diamond, a thriller about the illicit jewel trade in war-torn Sierra Leone and starring DiCaprio as a smuggler alongside Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly, averaged a less-than-sparkling $4,528 at 1,910 locations. Unaccompanied Minors, also from Warner Bros, was also undersized. The PG-rated romp about a bunch of kids traveling home alone and snowed in at an airport on Christmas Eve, bagged just $2,096 per screen at 2,775 locations. Meantime, both Happy Feet and Casino Royale continued to add to their substantial tallies in their fourth week. The penguin 'toon only fell off 26 percent while dropping one slot to second place. At 3,650 sites, the Warner Bros. release averaged $3,535 per screen and saw its total rise to $137.7 million. The latest Bond installment dipped 41 percent as it fell from second to fourth. The Sony-spawned spy saga, starring Daniel Craig as the new 007, averaged $2,824 at 3,161 sites and pushed its domestic gross to $128.8 million. The approach of Christmas did nothing to help The Nativity Story. The manger was virtually bare in its second weekend, with the New Line release falling off 27 percent, down from its fourth-place opening to eighth. Playing in 3,083 sites, the tale of Mary and Joseph's trek to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus, averaged only $1,853 for $5.7 million to bring its 10-day haul to just $15.9 million. Failing even more drastically was Fox Atomic's horror flick Turistas. The flick's 60 percent nosedive took it out of the top 10 in its second weekend, and it has only grossed $6 million. However, Fox can be happy that the studio's Borat, though also now one spot removed from the top 10, has reached $120.3 million and counting in North America. Overall, it was a down weekend. Although Gibson's number-one opening has to be viewed as something of a success, it was the lowest top gross since the traditionally slow period in early September. According to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations, the box office was down 25 percent from this time last year, when The Chronicles of Narnia opened with a whopping $65.5 million. Here's a recap of the top-grossing films from Friday to Sunday, based on official studio tallies compiled by Exhibitor Relations: 1. Apocalypto, $15 million 2. Happy Feet, $12.9 million 3. The Holiday, $12.8 million 4. Casino Royale, $8.9 million 5. Blood Diamond, $8.6 million 6. Déjà Vu, $6 million 7. Unaccompanied Minors, $5.8 million 8. The Nativity Story, $5.7 million 9. Deck the Halls, $4 million 10. The Santa Clause 3, $3.3 million
Sierra Leone frets over Blood Diamond image (2006-12-18)DiCaprio vs. DiCaprio at Critics Choice Awards (2006-12-12)Mel's Apocalypto: Bloody Good Business (2006-12-12)"Dreamgirls" among group's top award picks (2006-12-12)Gibson delivers another box office win (2006-12-11)
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