SUNDAY AM: Disney’s G rated tween/teen audience pleaser High School Musical 3: Senior Year sounded the right note at the box office this weekend to become what the studio boasted was the biggest musical ever both internationally and domestically, and the first global #1 opening since The Dark Knight. HSM3 opened with a big $16.9 million Friday from a very wide release into 3,623 North American theaters. But then it surprisingly fell 9% Saturday to make $15.3 million. So now its domestic weekend total, counting Sunday’s estimated gross, is a hefty $42 million. Overseas, it did another $40 million after launching day and date in 19 territories through Sunday, including the UK, Germany, Spain, France and Brazil. Clearly, the HSM TV franchise’s huge Disney Channel ratings translated into HSM3‘s theatrical ticket sales. Let’s dance and sing and win one for the senior class! (That tried and true wholesome upbeat formula succeeds at the start of the holiday movie season yet again.) Advance sales had been off the hook for a while. Friday night, for instance, tween girls in Kalamazoo, Michigan, planned their birthday bashes around the movie’s debut. 
One group, accompanied by a mother, showed up in homemade HSM T-shirts (photo below). Disney knew that HSM3 would be a hard film to track since no one can recall a TV movie (as opposed to TV series) that has been made into a theatrical motion picture sequel. One for the record books. But the pic easily made the transition from the small to big screen thanks to Kenny Ortega’s direction and Peter Barsocchini’s script and stars Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale. HSM3 also beat its musical genre category comps, opening much better than Mamma Mia and Hairspray which also went after predominantly younger and female audiences. Internationally, HSM3 still has 35% of the world left to open, including Mexico, Italy and Belgium.
In 2nd place, Twisted Picture/Lionsgate’s revolting torture porn gorefest Saw V made a $14.1 million debut Friday from 3,060 venues, then fell 30% Saturday for $9.9 million for a $30.5M weekend — on a par with the $31.7M-$33.1M that this franchise’s sequels have reliably generated even though this kind of Hard R-rated crap is increasingly repulsive to teen women on Date Night. Yet Lionsgate boasts it’s on its way to becoming the top-grossing horror franchise of all time. The five Saw films have now grossed a cumulative $316.2 million to date at the domestic box office and will pass the $317.8 million hauled in by the eleven Friday the 13th films Monday or Tuesday. The Saw franchise also passed Halloween, whose nine films have grossed a cumulative $307.4 million, this past weekend. The Saw franchise is already one of the most profitable in box office history. The original Saw cost only $1.2 million to make, and the franchise now has achieved worldwide box office of more than $550 million and combined worldwide theatrical and home entertainment grosses of more than $1 billion.
But New Line/Warner Bros’ been there/done that crime drama Pride And Glory starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell made a pathetic $2.3 million Friday and $2.4 million Saturday at 2,585 plays for No. 5 and a $6.2M weekend. Then again, neither Norton or Farrell have the star power to open a movie.
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Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D, the 2008 re-issue playing in 284 runs, took in $372K this weekend. Universal platformed Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-touted The Changeling starring Angelina Jolie at 15 theaters in 9 markets for $502K from Friday-Sunday, a terrific start.
There’s been tremendous interest by the public in the box office fate of Oliver Stone’s W. for its second weekend in release. Well, it ran out of steam. QED International/Lionsgate’s Bush biopic sank 58% to No. 7 with a $5.3M weekend from 2,050 dates and new cume of $18.7M. The $30M negative cost film should end up with $23M domestic box office gross by the end of its North American run. That means, with a $25M P&A investment and Lionsgate’s distribution fees, the film won’t recoup.
The rest of the Top 10 were veterans. 20th Century Fox’s Max Payne starring Mark Wahlberg in the video game-turned-movie dropped 57% from a week ago for a $7.6M weekend from 3,381 dates for 3rd place. With a new cume of only $29.6M, this film is looking like an underperformer. Disney’s Beverly Hills Chihuahua keeps hanging on and earned another $6.9M this weekend from 3,190 theaters for No. 4 and a solid $78.1M cume. In the 6th spot, Fox Searchlight’s heartwarming The Secret Life Of Bees took in $5.9M (-44%) for the weekend from 1,630 venues for a new $19.2M cume. DreamWorks/Paramount’s Shia LeBoeuf actioner Eagle Eye raked in another $5.1M this weekend from 2,558 runs for a new cume of $87.9M for #8. Warner Bros’ thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in costly Body Of Lies came in No. 9 with a $4M Friday from 2,150 theaters and weak new cume of $30.8M. And in the 10th spot, Screen Gems/Sony’s Quarantine scared up another $2.5M this FSS from 2,228 plays for a fresh $28.7M cume.
Overall, this was a great weekend for Hollywood at the box office with $136M, up 35% from last year.
Well, my girlfriend loved Saw V a whole lot. Where are you getting this data that women are “repulsed” by the films.
Oh, that’s right, it’s just you. And you haven’t even bothered to watch them. If you had, you’d know that only III and IV are hyper-gory.
Nikki,
Stop the hysterical ranting against horror movies. They have a devoted following who are not hurting anyone. You make yourself sound silly, saying a movie repels the audience at the same time you are reporting it is making a huge profit. Seems like an awful lot of teen girls on date night must be going to generate a 13 million dollar Friday. Just because they don’t entertain you, doesn’t mean nobody else can enjoy them. Some people think chick flicks are revolting. LOL
Chill out!
DS
Uh, sorry, but I find it highly unlikely that HSM 3 will at least do any domination of any kind in Germany. The first-run HSM2 on free tv gathered a quota of 6.3 percent of the market share when it was aired, which translates into 1.9 M viewers in prime-time. It even lost out against a re-run of an RTL show that night, October 13, 2007, and that showing was for free.
A lot of what makes Disney money in the US doesn’t translate too well into, at least, the German markets. Case in point would be e.g. Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus. Her CD is on no. 267 of the Amazon.de sales charts, hasn’t even broken into the top 100 overall sales…
There’s been a lot of product lately from Hollywood, be it TV shows or movies (let’s include the music industry as well here) that – with few choice exceptions, the big brand movies – just doesn’t play very well in the international markets, that doesn’t get a good grip on those markets.
Of course, one can say, who the heck cares? It’s just them dumb foreigners, right? Well, considering that every, yes EVERY successful blockbuster movie makes between 60-70 percent of its overall revenue from the foreign countries, one maybe should care a little bit more.
The way some of those movies are made now reminds me a little bit of that Oprah Winfrey story from a few years back. And it sounds like a joke, but it was widely reported at the time, and even if it wasn’t true, it nonetheless would serve to illustrate the point. So, Oprah Winfrey is in Paris, and she wants to shop at an Hermés store there. As is apparently custom, she wants to do it after hours and have the store re-open just for her. The store owner refuses and is met by a (self-)righteous huff of “Don’t you know WHO I AM?” To which he apparently replied, “Non, Madame, I do not, nor do I particularly care…”
(ah, the French :) Can there be any other who can be polite and rude at the same time?)
Just because somebody is BIG in the US doesn’t mean (not anymore) that the rest of the markets care, or at least care enough to open stores… or wallets for them.
Are you obsessed with Saw? You don’t miss any opportunity to trash it. Maybe it’s too revolting for your tastes but obviously many think it’s good and i agree with them: it somehow manages to be more than just a torture porn flick like you critics call it. I f you want torture porn then go see Hostel
A bunch people walked out of PRIDE & GLORY last night during the scene involving the baby and the iron.
It’s essentially We Own the Night 2. Worth a rental though.
“Increasingly repulsive to teen women”? When I was at a theater last night, there were so many teen females waiting in line for Saw V that I thought it was the line for HSM3.
Pride and Glory was shot in early 2006. Almost three years ago. Any ideas why its taken so long to come the screen? Guessing it may have something to do with Norton.
Ok I saw it last night, amazing, and such a fun theatre experience. Everyone was in the aisles dancing and singing, I guess everyone got the soundtrack and memorized all the songs way before the movie even came out.
I will probably go see it again on Sunday.
HSM1 and HSM2 were free to watch in repeats since they were on TV. With movies now costing $10-11 due to theater owner greed, HSM3 will be getting a lot less repeats.
If the hype about “Twilight” was real, the grosses it would pull would look like HSM3.
But since it isn’t, it won’t.
Hundreds of Internet comments on websites gushing about “Twilight” doesn’t equal even once cent in box office gross. When it comes to the Internet, there is often an inverse relationship between fanboy/girl hype and actual box office gross. See “Snakes on a Plane,” “Grindhouse,” etc.
“Watchmen” doesn’t look too hot, either. Except for the hardcore fans, the consensus opinion of the “Watchmen” trailer was an almost laughable “WTF?” Fans should be thankful for the lawsuit, because “Watchmen” needs as many media shout-outs as possible.
1. HSM3’s “Brief 100-minute running time”?? First of all, it is 112 minutes…without previews or commercials. and even if it WAS 100, that’s fairly standard for most non-epic movies these days. It’s not like it’s an under 90-minute film.
2. Your personal crusade against Hard-R horror films is getting old and tired. Let’s face it, YOU don’t like them, but plenty of people in the pubic do. If they are “increasingly repulsive” to people, why is it making $$? Different tastes for different people. Maybe try being professional, and keeping your personal opinions to yourself, ok?
Well, Nikki you’d be right on about “every girl and her mom” being at SHM 3. While waiting for seating for “Nightmare Before Christmas 3D”, lots of tots, teenage girls and their parents kept on flooding the theater for HSM 3 tickets.
One girl foolishly asked me what movie I was going to go see, especially since I clearly had the 3-D glasses for “Nightmare” in my hands.
Nikki, why the surprise that SAW 5 did great when IT’S HALLOWEEN!
Hello?????
And HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 was good counter programming and it’s good to see that Disney is going back to its roots (family entertainment).
Not everyone wants to pay $10 to see some pretentious, boring drivel.
My girlfriend would LOVE to see saw. Saw is made cheap(in canada i believe) and makes all of it back, time after time, movie after movie. The movie business needs more movies with saw’s formula.
And what do you define as torture porn? Or porn rather, because they are getting tortured but, as far as I know, noone is getting fucked. Noone even got fucked and tortured in Hostel, come on Nikki, im a big reader of yours… blehhh
Ok I saw it last night, amazing, and such a fun theatre experience. Everyone was in the aisles dancing and singing, I will probably go see it again on Sunday.
Comment by Zaquisha
So you really must have liked SAW V a lot….
I can state with a high level of confidence that there are a ton of repeat viewers for HSM3 who are not kids with parents — I was one of them, and at 22, I’m barely in Disney’s target demographic. Considering the fact that the midnight screening I attended was filled with nearly 200 20-somethings, no kids at all, and the second time I saw it, last night at 9 pm, even then it was mostly 20-somethings (a few hs kids, but not many), I’d say this film will have a longer life than many expect.
Keep in mind that kids are used to being able to watch HSM on a TV screen on the night it premieres, along with the other 4 times it replays that week, added to the repeat showings every couple of weeks after that. The fact that the film is in a theater now does not seem to hinder all of these repeat viewings, other than the cost (the fact that I have now spent 70 dollars on getting to the theater, food, and then the tickets on 2 showings of a film is a little crazy).
The first SAW was a very clever psychological thriller.
But you’re dead on about the rest – utterly pointless.
@ Harold:
The difference between “Twilight” and bombs like “Snakes on a Plane” and “Grindhouse” is that the latter two had a lot of Internet chatter but hardly anything else to motivate pople to go to the theater. Films like “Twilight”, “Watchmen” and HSM 3 have built up a massive fanbase before the movies’ production were announced (a widely popular book series, a still-popular graphic novel and two previous films on the Disney channel), giving those films a bigger advantage than SnoP or Grindhouse.
Now not every film based on a book series or TV series/movie hits it big, but if what you said actually applied in the real world, then “Dark Knight” would’ve been a big, fat bomb. The Internet campaign for that movie actually helped involve fans and increase awareness for the film (of course, it played a smaller role compared to the excellent first movie, the marketing campaigns and trailers).
So stop talking about things you know nothing about. It depends on how studios utilize the Internet to promote their movies and get people involved (and actually get butts into theaters). It varies for each movie… we’ll see in a few weeks whether your ‘prediction’ holds true for “Twilight.”
Will no one defend Nikki on the horror movie thing?
Okay then I will.
Nikki’s right about most of these movies. They are just shock-values crap that usually demeans women.
There are still some truly scary films out there and they don’t need to lop off a head to unsettle you:
THE STRANGERS
MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN (Fantastic!)
THE HOST
ROB ZOMBIE’S HALLOWEEN
Don’t back down, Nikki. I got your back.
Anyone who saw the ratings for HSM2 knew HSM3 was going to be huge, economic downturn be damned. The matinees this weekend are gong to be huge.
The real question is how leg the legs of HSM3 are. Repeats of HSM and HSM2 still do quite well on Disney Channel. But, well, that’s free.
It would’ve been nice to see a a Grudge3 this fall to take on SawV
Bravo!!!! To the brilliant mind of HSM creator Bill Borden!!!
Geez, I hope “High School Musical 3” blasts the box office. My Walt Disney stock has been battered lately, so maybe, just maybe, Zac and company will pull it out of the doldrums.
Go, tweens, go!
Oh and no surprise PRIDE AND GLORY is dying a silent death considering it gathered the stench of death during its two long years spent sitting on the shelf.
Edward Norton opened The Incredible Hulk to the tune of 55 million! And that was without doing any publicity for it because he was so bitter at Marvel for whittling out all of the substance for the sake of shoehorning more showtimes in per screen. He’s always going to work steadily even if he’s an egotistical pain in the ass behind the scenes because he’s one of the most respected actors around talent-wise. I heard him on the radio saying that Pride & Glory was one to see so I’m not going to let the bad box office and rotten-lopsided tomatometer deter me; by the way in the same interview he more or less confirmed that the theatrical Hulk cut was a POS so it’s not like he said P&G was worth checking out just to blow smoke up peoples’ you know whats.