Week 8 Recap: PIXARed

Another week, another underwhelming box office.  Apparently, everyone had too much money to spend this season or overspent it on the early movies, cause for the seventh straight week, the new releases for the week are on track for a combined negative profit for their owners.  "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" was originally forecasting revenues in the $100 million vicinity, but as its release date got closer, people realized that it was too much of a niche film to reach that broad of an audience (plus, critics gave it very mixed reviews).  It managed to bring in $16 mil this past weekend, putting it on pace to make back Darius' investment and little more.  Steve Carell's "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World" did even worse, making only $4 mil and put John on pace to lose $10-20 mil on the comedy.  The one limited release film of the week, Woody Allen's "To Rome with Love", started small at $360k, but should do much better once it releases more widely.  Allen's last movie, "Midnight in Paris", also started relatively small but made nearly $60 mil by the end of its theater run.  The only real winner of the week proved to be the highly anticipated "Brave", PIXAR's newest in a long line of imaginative, well-made, box-office destroying movies.  While it ended up not doing as well as hoped, the $66 mil it did make should put Jeremy on pace for a profit of about $30 mil.

In older Studio Wars news, Madagascar 3 held better against Brave than expected, dropping only 42%.  Meanwhile, Prometheus dropped a bunch more and is destined to be the biggest loser of the season so far, which is now half over.

This weekend, it looks like "Ted" and "Brave" will duke it out for first place, while Tyler Perry's newest film will edge out "Magic Mike" for third, with "People Like Us" projecting to be a distant also-ran.

Current Standings (Projected Total):
1. Matt - $688 ($793)
2. John - $373 ($492)
3. Darius - $305 ($544)
4. Jeremy - $215 ($494)
5. Ryan - $186 ($523)
6. Pat - $130 ($530)
7. AJ - $122 ($500)