Depp/Burton DARK SHADOWS Is In Release!!

[Mysterious Benefactor]

The Castro has a Friday night series called Midnight For Maniacs, triple bills of older B & cult films. I'm going to email them and request that they do all three DS films at the Midnight series--HODS & NODS packed the place in 2008.

It would be quite interesting to have all three of them play together, David. 


Changing reels, I see where Box Office Mojo is reporting that DS brought in $4.2 million this weekend in foreign markets, bringing its current foreign gross to $151.6 million. 

With the increase in theaters, it will definitely be interesting to see what DS brought in domestically this weekend. But those figures aren't up yet.

52 days 12 hours 37 minutes 44 seconds since the Depp/Burton Dark Shadows has been in release(ET)!!

[The Doctor and K9]

I found the Rumford theater on Fandango.  It's at 60 Newport Ave.(which might also be Route 1?).  It's a ten screen building right on the RIPTA Bus line.  The price was dine, but the effort expended to get from Newport to the theater made me regret making the trip for such a poor copy of the film.

[madscntst]

DS did quite well this past weekend, so adding theaters definitely helped!  It made $393,406, bringing the domestic total to $76,280,764.  Currently in 20th place on Box Office Mojo for the weekend, but I don't know if all the numbers are in yet.  Worldwide, the total is now $227,880,764.

[David]

It was #22 last week--that's great! For a so-called flop, DS is hanging on nicely!

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Thanks for posting the weekend numbers, madscntst. 

Currently in 20th place on Box Office Mojo for the weekend, but I don't know if all the numbers are in yet.

The nice thing about Box office Mojo, as opposed to sites like boxoffice.com, is that they don't post their charts until all the numbers that are going to be reported are in. So, if you see their charts are up, you know nothing is missing. 

And speaking of DS' ranking for the overall weekend, the fact that it came in 20th is actually quite interesting because over the weekend it was doing battle with Battleship, The Hunger Games and Safety Not Guaranteed to see who could best whom. On Saturday DS placed 18th with $117,139, besting both The Hunger Games and Safety Not Guaranteed, but Battleship bested it - on Saturday, its highest grossing day of the weekend with $156,037, it placed 20th because all three of the other films did a bit better - and on Sunday it was back to being 18th again, that time with $120,230, and managed to best both Battleship and Safety Not Guaranteed, though not The Hunger Games. But in the end Battleship and The Hunger Games managed to make $10,074 and $3,739, respectively, more than DS to overtake it for the overall weekend. But at least it did overtake Saftey Not Guaranteed for the overall weekend, which is something it hadn't been able to do for the past two weekends - and it also managed to best Battleship on at least one day of the weekend, which is something DS had never done - though, of course, that's because DS has been out a week longer - and in the overall scheme of things, Battleship isn't ever likely to gross more than DS has domestically.

One other thing I noticed is that during the weekend DS' per screen averages were the highest they've been since its 4th weekend in release for Friday and Saturday and its 3rd weekend in release for Sunday. 

adding theaters definitely helped!

Yes - and adding theaters helped it to become only 1 of 3 films in the Top 20 to have a positive percentage from last weekend - a very nice +51.1%.

52 days 17 hours 40 minutes 26 seconds since the Depp/Burton Dark Shadows has been in release(ET)!!

[Mysterious Benefactor]

For a so-called flop, DS is hanging on nicely!

Yeah, well - we can pretty much suspect that the main reason most of these places are calling DS that is because it's a Burton/Depp film and apparently in their minds Burton/Depp aren't allowed to have a film that doesn't gross hundreds of millions of dollars domestically. That despite the fact that supernatural genre films and vampire films in particular very rarely gross anything like that. As it is, DS currently places 9th on Box Office Mojo's Vampire Genre chart (which goes back to 1978) and 7th on their Horror Comedy chart (which goes back to 1980). But apparently none of that means anything. And truthfully it's getting to the point where getting upset about the film being called a flop is pretty useless because the people doing so aren't ever going to change their perception. All we can really do is live with it, just like we live with everything else that's ever been said about DS that's derogatory though not really true.

Although, before I close the book on that, something I discovered today thanks to Box Office Mojo providing a link to their ALL TIME: R-Rated Openings chart (because Ted opened so well this past weekend), The Wolfman (a film which I'm sure many got tired of me mentioning featured a good deal of the same behind the scenes personnel as DS did) being featured on it, and my then checking out its main page, is that The Wolfman only managed to bring in a domestic gross of $61,979,680 and a foreign gross of $77,810,085, for a worldwide gross of $139,789,765, which is well under what DS is already at on all three of those fronts. But does anyone remember that film being described as a flop? I don't. Yet its budget was supposedly equal to or even higher than what some Web sites are citing DS' budget at.    (But then, even though a great deal of the same people worked on it as worked on DS, neither Burton nor Depp worked on it. Hmmm...)

52 days 18 hours 18 minutes 25 seconds since the Depp/Burton Dark Shadows has been in release(ET)!!

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Oops - again I forgot to include the link to Box Office Mojo's chart:

Weekend Box Office

52 days 19 hours 0 minutes 4 seconds since the Depp/Burton Dark Shadows has been in release(ET)!!

[Gerard]

Approaching $230 million dollars and that's a flop?  I'd be happy to earn 1/230th of that and be called a flop.  Heck, I'll take 1/460th of that.  I'll even take 1/anything-th.  I'm trying to save money to have my gas turned back on.  "Showering" in the Little House on the Prairie fashion has gotten old.  Or how Willie had to do it when he lived with Barnabas in the Old House.

Gerard

[Cousin_Barnabas]

Willie showered?

Okay... maybe John Karlen, but the rest...   

[The Doctor and K9]

The question of whether or not it is a flop depends upon how much it makes versus how much it cost to produce it.  Our information regarding the latter has been inconclusive at best.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Considering some sites say the film cost $100 million, some say $125 million, others say $150 million, and still others say $175 million, I'd say inconclusive probably doesn't even begin to describe it.  And the thing is that what many of the sites doing the saying would appear to be doing is seemingly simply pulling a figure out of a hat, so there's no way to tell who might actually be closest to being right and who's just so way off that it's not even funny. And as jimbo rightly points out, we're likely to never really know the actual figure because studios are loath to reveal film budgets. And the sites doing much of the saying also know that. So what they're saying is really just based more on their own perceptions of the film and those involved with it than anything else - and certainly more than actual facts. 

52 days 23 hours 3 minutes 58 seconds since the Depp/Burton Dark Shadows has been in release(ET)!!

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Wow - it's looking like on Monday DS may have jumped up to 17th place, or at least back to 18th, by bringing in $62,569, which brings its current domestic gross to $76,343,333.

53 days 15 hours 34 minutes 19 seconds since the Depp/Burton Dark Shadows has been in release(ET)!!

[David]

 
LIKE!

[Gerard]

I might have a fourth chance to see it!  And it would be at - are you ready for this? - a drive-in theater!  There's one of the few ones left in a small town not far from here.  And it would be, again, a double-feature if they run it (not sure what the other film would be).  And the cost, you may ask?  Are you also ready for this?  Two bucks a car, no matter how many are in it!  You don't even have to hide everyone in the trunk!  I haven't been to an outdoor theater for well over thirty years, if not more.  The last film I was at one (while on vacation in South Carolina) was the spooky George C. Scott horror film, The Changeling. 

I grew up with drive-ins.  The first film I saw at one was Hey, There, It's Yogi Bear.  The next one was Mary Poppins.  As teens (where we did do the hiding-in-the-trunk thing) and young adults, we went all the time.  We mostly saw horror movies, from Prophecy to the original Dawn of the Dead (which was filmed in a shopping mall I often patronized after I moved to Pittsburgh, PA, and - ironically - even though it was filmed in Toronto, the remake was set in a mall in Milwaukee, WI, Milwaukee being only an hour away from where I live - small world, ain't it?).  Drive-ins required a rather resiliant form of movie goers.  First of all, there were the speakers one attached to the driver's side window and it gave only a scratchy sound (it was better to open the windows and listen to the better clarity of all the speakers going), and you never got one that didn't have bird poop on it.  Then you dealt with the mosquitoes.  The options in battling those blood-suckers (and maybe I'll get to see our favorite blood-sucker one more time) was limited.  You could close the windows, but then they fogged up, so you had to turn on the car and run the de-fogger, not a good idea on a hot, humid summer night.  You could go into the concession cabin and purchase an anti-mosquitoe "puck," which was a cylindrical thing your set on your dash board and lit with the car's cigarette lighter (boy, I'm really showing my age now), but it's effect was limited, if it worked at all.  And, of course, we did the one usual "practical joke" always done when going to a drive-in.  We convinced a newbie to go to the concession cabin and pick up tons of popcorn, pizza, candy and soda, and whilst the "virgin" was there, we'd move the car and duck down as we watched, hysterical with laughter, as the newbie hunted up and down the various lanes looking for us.  Oh, c'mon.  It was funny and the newbie was initiated and did the same thing to the next newbie.  It's not like we dumped a bucket of pig's blood on someone's head at prom.

So maybe I'll go again, for a fourth time, but only if I can get a bunch to go with me.  Two bucks for a full car is the ultimate bargain, even if it means mosquitoes and bird-pooped speakers and all that.  Any of you want to come?  I promise you, when we send you to the concession cabin, we won't move the car.  We won't.  I promise.  Really.  I do.

Gerard

[Mysterious Benefactor]

All the figures are finally in for Monday. It took forever for Sony/Columbia to report the figures for Men In Black 3 and That's My Boy, and for Focus Features to report Moonrise Kingdom. I'd taken both Sony/Columbia films into account when I made my earlier post, but I'd completely forgotten about Moonrise Kingdom - and it also brought in more money than DS. So, that means DS ranked 19th. But no matter because it's still amazing that DS brought in $62,569 in its 53rd day in release in only 365 theaters because that is not only comparable to the $61,965 that Safe House made in its 53rd day in 729 theaters, nearly twice as many theaters as DS is playing in, but it was a boatload more than the film in second place in DS' theater range, which just happens to be Wrath of the Titans, which brought in $45,320 back on its 53rd day. And once again the attached chart will show all of that.

Another interesting thing is that for just the second time DS managed to best Battleship, and this time by a sizable amount because that film brought in $44,555 on Monday.

Monday's Box Office

Now it's going to be extremely interesting to see what DS did today and what it will do on the 4th of July holiday on Wednesday.

53 days 18 hours 8 minutes 30 seconds since the Depp/Burton Dark Shadows has been in release(ET)!!