Monday Morning Box Office: Twelve At One
Another Monday morning, another restorative tango through the weekend's box office estimates.
1. Ocean's Twelve — $40.9 million
Some will view Ocean's Twelve's victory in its opening weekend as testament to the drawing power of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Matt Damon. Others might less charitably note that this works out to a mere $8.18 million per A-lister, or about $500K less than Bernie Mac opened Mr. 3000, all by himself.
2. Blade: Trinity — $16.1 million
Blade 2 debuted at better than double the money of Trinity. With these diminishing returns, the fifth installment will be nothing more than five minutes of a camcorder following Wesley Snipes as he tries to startle tourists in front of the Chinese Theatre with a pair of cheap, plastic fangs.
3. National Treasure — $10 million
It took the aforementioned gang of five superstars to dethrone Nic Cage, the New King of Hollywood, from the top box office position. We imagine that's exactly how his agent and manager began their pitch to cash in with back-to-back jobs doing Con Air 2 and Still the Family Man.
4. The Polar Express — $9.8 million
The sneaky, slow-building movie will one day replace It's a Wonderful Life as the definitive holiday entertainment, with 24-hour marathons on all Turner cable stations. The filmmakers knew this would eventually come to pass, and an extra DVD feature will show a digitized Tom Hanks paddling Jimmy Stewart as he begs for mercy,
5. Christmas with the Kranks —$7.6 million
We had a terrible nightmare last night: We were five years old again, awakened at daybreak on Christmas morning, and rushed to the tree to see what Santa brought us to reward a year of our best behavior. But that's where our happy holiday morning ended, for Tim Allen, clad in a red suit (he didn't even bother with the beard), was holding open our stocking, dropping off what we will refer to as a "lump of coal." We'll never forget his look, a nearly indescribable combination of concentration and hate.
In an unrelated note, Christmas with the Kranks has grossed about $54 million in three weeks of release.