Wild Things Scares Up $32.5 Million

Update

Wild Things Scares Up $32.5 Million

Sun., Oct. 18, 2009 5:58 PM PDT by Joal Ryan

Warner Bros/ Pictures

The verdict's in: Where the Wild Things Are is not too scary for kids for Hollywood.

Director Spike Jonze's version of the Maurice Sendak children's classic beat back the bad buzz stemming from its reshoots and debatably dark vision with a first-place, $32.5 million box office debut, per estimates.

Elsewhere, the supposed-to-be-scary Paranormal Activity (third place, $20.2 million) had its biggest weekend yet, while Jamie Foxx's contribution to the Gerard Butler Movie of the Month Club, Law Abiding Citizen (second place, $21.3 million), acquitted itself OK.

Drilling down into the numbers:

• Wild Things did better than cautious projections. But whether it did enough for a film that reputedly cost between $80 and $100 million remains a question.

"It's definitely a big opening for what the film is," Exhibitor Relations box office analyst Jeff Bock said today. "But there is concern for weekend No. 2 that it will drop off quite a bit."

• The studio behind Wild Things says it's not worried. One reason: The film didn't scare off former kids. According to Warner Bros. exec Dan Fellman, 43 percent of the movie's audience was 18 and older; only 27 percent of ticket buyers were parents with young children. "I like where we sit for next week," Fellman said.

• Paranormal Activity, the weekend's hottest ticket by far, grossed twice as much at each of its theaters than it cost to make. To date, the $11,000 wonder has scared up $33.7 million.

• Law Abiding Citizen marked the prolific Butler's best opening since, well, July. The $50 million action drama came out on the high end of modest expectations.

• The horror remake The Stepfather only cost about $20 million, so its fifth-place, $12.3 million debut wasn't scary at all.

• Wild Things would do well to make like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (sixth place, $8.1 million). The CGI family film, which likewise had murky prospects, has hung in there for five weekends now, grossing $108.3 million.

• You know how Michael Jackson's This Is It is only supposed to play for two weeks? Uh-huh. So was the Toy Story double feature, which just finished its third weekend in eighth place ($3 million).

• Couples Retreat, last weekend's No. 1, took the standard second-week deduction and fell to fourth place ($17.9 million; $63.3 million overall).

• Maybe Capitalism ($1.4 million) just isn't all that sexy. Michael Moore's latest fell out of the Top 10 after a two-weekend stay. So far, the movie has grossed a documentary-huge but Moore-modest $11.6 million.

• Also leaving the Top 10: Drew Barrymore's Whip It ($1.5 million; $11.4 million overall) and the Fame remake ($880,000; $21.8 million overall). Neither made a dent; both made good on their budgets, if barely.

• The blaxploitation festival hit Black Dynamite got the shaft: a nothing-special $140,986 at 70 theaters.

Here's a look at the weekend's top-grossing films based on Friday-Sunday estimates as compiled by Exhibitor Relations: