59th Portuguese Box-Office Analysis

Yet another week in the desert where I write you this box-office report of the, now very far, Portugal I talk about. I am writing one per week here, but I just have the internet to send it the right time but I really have to put this in order when I get back to Portugal.
Altough, here is much easier to find the time to do it. The distractions are not that much. And when there is no big work or reports to do the time is a very long one.

Starting this week’s report I talk about the champion of the week. Criticized in the USA for going soft and leaving the politics of a, so, important theme as this one. The 9/11 has it everyone in the world. Even the ones who don’t care. And this result for “World Trade Center” proves it here in Portugal. So no news at the front.
But we do have 4 new openers in the top 20 and, especially, two in the top ten. Two have great openings, the other two, have disastrous openings.
In general the movies got a good hold of themselves and we even have a increase in the top ten, for one of the movies.
So despite all this we have a down week of 16% to 205296 spectators.
So let’s start with some numbers.

This report concerns the week between 28 of September to 4 of October.

Legend

Position/Movie
Number of Theathers
Number of Spectators/Week
Average per Theather/Week
Comparison with Last Week’s Number of Spectators
Number of Spectators/Total Run
Week of Release
1. World Trade Center
53
66992
1264
-43%
183989
2nd Week
2. You, Me and Dupree
42
26666
635
-9%
250400
5th Week
3. Lady in the Water
19
25727
1354
-
25727
1st Week

4. Snakes on a Plane
28
19015
679
-
19015
1st Week

5. Volver
18
14804
822
-21%
83225
4th Week

6. My Super Ex.
28
12541
448
-16%
48902
3rd Week

7. Little Man
18
11138
619
+5%
53491
4th Week

8. An Inconvenient Truth
9
9836
1093
-2%
28784
3rd Week

9. The Sentinel
28
9515
340
-18%
80889
5th Week

10. Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties
32
9062
283
-41%
200281
6th Week

The Champion:

And for the second straight week, we have “World Trade Center” and the top of Portuguese Box-Office. With 66992 spectators, despite a –43% drop making it the film that most dropped in it’s second week. But this is an usual drop for a film that opens big, and way above than it was expected to conjure. The 9/11 will be a big subject for cinema in the next years and that is something more than expected since it happened in US soil. You won’t see the same about the Madrid (Atocha) or Great Britain (London) because the industry is not as developed in those countries.

The New Players:

We find the first opener at number 3 and it’s one of my, if not the first, favorite directors, it’s Shyamalan latest, “Lady in the Water”. At the present moment, he is filming at the top of cinema. All his films look amazing on the big screen. It’s not the same in the DVD, at home. And that’s what I look when I go to the movies. To be overwhelmed. Not his best but another great movie of the mind of this excellent director. It made 25727 spectators for an ok average of 1354 per theater/week. The best average, of the week, in the top ten. Congrats.

The next opener is right after, it’s “Snakes on a Plane”. The film, best known, for the buzz it created just with the force of it’s title alone. The problem is that the buzz created didn’t create revenues, big enough for it. In Portugal, the buzz was almost non-existent, and so this was just a film with planes and snakes. Hence the disappointing average of 679. And only 19015 spectators to it’s name. It didn’t rang that many bells here. The title in Portuguese doesn’t sound so articulated.

Almost reaching the top ten, and a complete surprise is “Adrift”. In just 7 theaters it managed 8949 spectators for an average of above 1000. A very good result for a movie made with not that much money and going after one that opened just last year with almost the same story. And people are still buying it. That’s strange but good news for the distributors and especially for the film.

At 20 is the disappointment of the week, with an average of 354 to 2126 spectators. It’s “Clerks 2” that didn’t translate the first ones success to the screen. It’s stupid to make a sequel of an independent film of a different time and especially when you don’t have anything new to add except the age on the caracters. A bad choice for Kevin Smith, that I personally don’t like very much. Not that much of a director, if you ask me. He just got lucky with “Clerks”.

The Winner of the Week:

It has to be “Little Man”. A 5% increase in spectators numbers to 11138. An increase in average to 619 and especially because it was on the dreaded 4th Week. The numbers just don’t lie. But the film still sucks big time.

The Looser of the Week:

Altough it technically didn’t had the highest (that prize went to this week’s champion) I think it’s fair to say that it’s 283 average per theater/week and 9062 spectators for the week in the third biggest number of seats for the week and position number 10 say it all. Again, the numbers don’t lie. Ok I admit in this case they did. But perception on the other hand always does the trick. It's the cat "Garfield".

And so I leave you.
See you in another time here at bardus.blogspot.com.

Good Night and Good Films.