Weekend Recap: Three Times an Alice

A weekend of weak releases has kept Alice in Wonderland the uncontested box office No. 1 for the third straight week. And I keep wondering when I’m going to go see it and when I post a review, if any of you will even care by then.

Certainly 3D will not do for Alice and Wonderland what it did for Avatar, but it was definitely essential to getting “Alice” past $200 M in only its second week – that and no competition in terms of demographic. I’ve still yet to see it, but at some point I’ll get around to it.

1. Alice in Wonderland – $34.2 M (weekend) … $265.4 M (gross)
2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid – $22.1 M … $22.1 M
3. The Bounty Hunter $20.6 M … $20.6 M
4. Repo Men – $6.12 M .. $6.12 M
5. Green Zone – $6.11 M … $24.8 M
6. She’s Out of My League – $5.8 M … $19.7 M
7. Shutter Island – $4.7 M … $115.7 M
8. Avatar – $4 M … $736.9 M
9. Our Family Wedding – $3.7 M … $13.6 M
10. Remember Me – $3.2 M … $13.9 M

Diary of a Wimpy Kid was the film this weekend that made the most noise, outdoing The Bounty Hunter by a slim margin and ruining an otherwise perfect weekend of box office predictions for me. The kids’ film based on the popular books about a middle-schooler trying to fit in had an estimate $15 M budget, so anything from here on out is a bonus.

Although I got the order mostly right, I pegged Repo Men for earning at least twice what it did. For its genre, $6 M is horribly low which Universal can’t be too happy about.

The box office was down about 15 percent from last weekend and we’re still two weeks away from the release of Clash of the Titans, the next sleeping blockbuster on the release schedule. Next week, Dreamworks How to Train Your Dragon and the comedy Hot Tub Time Machine will vie to take advantage of Spring Break and give theaters a needed boost.