Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Valor captures box office peak
LOS ANGELES — Most of Hollywood spent last weekend preparing for the Oscars, but moviegoers preferred to go to war.
Act of Valor, a military action movie featuring real Navy SEALS, opened at $24.5 million, according to an estimate from distributor Relativity Media, making it by far the most popular choice for audiences.
Good Deeds, the latest movie from writer-director Tyler Perry, opened to $15.6 million. It’s the secondsmallest opening ever for the prolific filmmaker and actor, ahead of only 2007’s Daddy’s Little Girls ($11.2 million).
Wanderlust, a new Judd Apatow-produced comedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, and the thriller Gone, starring Amanda Seyfried, were both flops, opening to just $6.5 million and $4.8 million, respectively.
Act of Valor, which has won plaudits for its ultrarealistic action sequences that feature the SEAL stars in training exercises (but not for its leads’ iffy acting skills), was a big bet for Relativity. The financially struggling independent studio topped other bidders by paying $13.5 million for rights to the movie from production company Bandito Bros. It also committed millions of dollars to a marketing campaign that included four ads during and around the Super Bowl and online material targeting video game players.
But the investment appears to be paying off, as boxoffice receipts came in at the high end of pre-release expectations. Just as important, audiences loved the film, giving it an average grade of A, according to market research firm Cinemascore. That was true not only for men, who made up 71 percent of the audiences, but for women too.
“I think the biggest asset we have at this point is word of mouth,” said Relativity president of distribution Kyle Davies. “You can’t buy that and you can’t create it. It has to happen organically.”
Despite its softer-thanusual opening for a Perry movie, distributor Lionsgate is optimistic that Good Deeds will ultimately end up close to the filmmaker’s average gross of about $50 million. David Spitz, the studio’s executive vice president of distribution, noted that a strong Friday-to-saturday box-office increase of 25 percent, plus an A Cinemascore, indicates that Perry’s mostly female and black fan base loved the movie.
The same can’t be said for Wanderlust, which had the second-lowest opening ever for a movie produced by comedy guru Apatow, ahead of the 2007 music parody Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Wanderlust, about an uptight Manhattan couple who move to a commune, got a Cinemascore of B-minus. It was financed by Universal Pictures and a fund previously managed by Relativity for around $35 million.
The weak opening for Gone marks the second time in a row that a film released by Summit Entertainment has opened behind one from the studio that bought it in January, Lionsgate, on the same weekend. The picture opened so poorly, in fact, that it enjoys the dubious distinction of being the lowest nationwide premiere for a movie so far in 2012.
The largely female audience gave it a Cinemascore of just C-plus.
Among Oscar winners, The Artist enjoyed the strongest weekend, with ticket sales up 23 percent, to $3 million.