'Meatballs' Rain on Willis' Parade With $24.6 million

Losing very little of its box office drawing power in its second weekend, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” rained all over the market’s three new major entrants. The animated kids film cooked up an estimated three-day total of $24.6 million, according to studio sources,

“That holdover killed us,” said Chuck Viane, distribution president for Disney, which saw its futuristic Bruce Willis action film “Surrogates” do a below-than-hoped-for $15 million over the weekend. “ ‘Cloudy’ had a terrific second weekend.”

For its part, MGM also saw a portion of its female-heavy audience for its remake of “Fame” siphoned away by Sony’s 3D animated PG film, which was only off 19 percent from its $30.1 million premiere weekend.

“We did $10 million, which is a respectable number, but it obviously could have been more if not for the fact that it was a down weekend and ‘Meatballs’ held up like gangbusters,” said MGM distribution head Erik Lomis.

Indeed, moviegoing in general wasn’t a hugely popular option this past weekend, with overall North American ticket sales down about 10 percent to $86 million, according to studio estimates.

Also generating disappointing returns, Overture’s R-rated space-monster movie “Pandorum” got off to a $4.4 million start.

However, it was “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," produced by Sony’s in-house computer animation division, that defied the market’s oppressive gravity. The movie now has grossed a cumulative total of $60 million domestically.

Given the film’s $100 million production budget, the strong second weekend was happy news for Sony.

“We’re going to make good money on this picture,” insisted Sony distribution head Rory Bruer, noting that box office revenues were actually up 6 percent in the U.K. over the weekend, while territories including Mexico (down only 7 percent) experienced only moderate declines. Bruer said International totals will be released later on Sunday.

“We had incredible holds on the picture pretty much everywhere,” he added. “We had the right (release) date, and we had the goods to back it up.”

Profitability-wise, Disney will obviously have a much tougher time with “Surrogates,” which costs the studio’s adult-focused production arm Touchstone about $80 million to produce.

According to Viane, Disney’s pre-release tracking had the film doing as much as $17 million worth of business, while rival studios were projecting as much as $25 million for the film.

“We had higher hopes, but reality is reality,” Viane said. “We certainly beat the films we opened up against, but once a family movie like ‘Cloudy’ gets into the marketplace and starts to churn, that’s tough. Plus, the intention of people this weekend to go to the movies was on the low end. You put those factors together, and this is what you get.”

For its part, “Fame” -- a remake of the 1980 movie musical -- was produced for only $18 million, according MGM, and was financed by advance sales to foreign distributors.

 

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