U.S Box Office Report - 21st - 23th March 2008

1. Horton Hears a Who - $25.1M - $86.4M
2. Meet the Browns - $20M - $20M
3. Shutter - $10.7M - $10.7M
4. Drillbit Taylor - $10.2M - $10.2M
5. 10,000 B.C. - $8.6M - $76.1M
6. Never Back Down - $4.8M - $16.8M
7. College Road Trip - $4.6M - $32M
8. The Bank Job - $4.1M - $19.4
9. Vantage Point - $3.8M - $65.2M
10. Under The Same Moon - $2.6M - $3.3M

With it being Easter takings on Sunday will be much lower than on any normal Sunday. That said, Easter could benefit Horton and Meet The Browns as they're both family-centric films and the studios will be hoping that families think going to the cinema together is a very Eastery thing to do. Horton retains the top spot with its Friday take off just 22% from the same time last week. After a strong opening the film has powered towards recouping its $85M budget and crossed $100M globally (that includes its domestic take). With the family market being starved save for Spiderwicke, they've lapped up Horton and it should have no trouble surpassing the take of The Cat in the Hat. Two movies open wide next weekend but neither will affect Horton's market directly giving it a potential third decent weekend in a row.

Less than six months after the release of Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married, he returns with Meet The Browns and brings his popular grandmother creation Madea with him. Never underestimate the box office power of a playwrite & director in a female fat suit to get bums on seats. Meet The Browns doesn't open as high as Madea's last outing (a $30M opening in Feb 2006) but still sees a strong return from a relatively small location count (just over 2000). As mentioned above, the film will have been affected by the Easter holiday, and to a lesser degree, Horton Hears A Who. The reported budget on this one is just $15M so come next weekend the film may well have recouped its advertising and prints budget on top of its production budget this weekend.

Tyler Perry is a one man media ninja, with book, plays, TV shows and films all in his arsenal. He works very fast, very cheaply and in the US, is extremely popular. Meet The Browns will be the first attempt to bring his creation Madea to the rest of the world, with numerous foreign releases planned. From an estimated four film budget of $36.5M his movies have made over $200M, and that excludes Meet The Browns, DVD and TV sales. In September he'll release his third film within 12 months.

In a bit of a suprise, PG-13 rated Thai horror remake Shutter takes third spot. Estimates had it pegged opening around fifth. Joshua Jackson stars as a photographer who begins to see ghost-like images in the pictures he's taken after being involved in a car accident. These remakes are still coming thick and fast, with The Eye just exiting screens now. They're produced cheaply, released with minimum fanfare and serve really as a glorified advert for the inevitable unrated DVD release. Shutter will end up with around $25-30M come the end of its run as Hollywood continues to look to the east for inspiration.

Drillbit Taylor had a good pedigree, being produced by Judd Apatow and co-written by Seth Rogen (it actually started out as an idea belonging to John Hughes). The release marks Owen Wilson's second film since his suicide attempt, (The Darjeeling Limited was released shortly after the incident), but Drillbit Taylor looks unlikely to repeat the success of that film. Trailers were uninspiring and the story itself (kids hire an ex-soldier to help them fight bullys) didn't appear to appeal to the general public. It did well to see $10M but it won't stay in the charts for too long, gaining a couple of extra weeks perhaps due to the lack of wide new releases.

Only a few weeks after release 10,000BC is already down to single figure weekends. Thankfully its take outside of the US has already overtaken its domestic one and will really help prop it up. It'll cover its budget before leaving the top ten so can count a good percentage of that global take as profit. Never Back Down did alright last weekend and is off around 43% in its second frame. Made for just $20M, it won't be repeating any of the success seen by Step Up 2 and its ilk, but should do well on DVD. College Road Trip sees $30M this weekend and has pretty much run its race. After a strong start the film fell quickly and may not now serve as a launching pad for Raven Symone's movie career.

Like last weekend, The Bank Job is down just 18% from the previous frame. The Jason Statham bank heist drama has now made $19M in three weeks of release. Word of mouth is helping the movie a great deal, especially after its somewhat disappointing opening weekend and its still limited location count. The film should see at least one more weekend in the top ten.

Rounding us out this weekend is one new release and one old one. Vantage Point crossed $100M on the global market this weekend as it passed $65M in the US. Not bad for a film with little hype or word of mouth two months ago. In a surprise move, the extremely limited release of Hispanic drama Under The Same Moon (at just 266 locations) manages to get a spot in the top ten thanks to the popularity of star America Ferrara (TVs Ugly Betty). Along with Meet The Browns, Under the Same Moon had the best screen to takings average of any movie in the top fifteen. Elsewhere Doomsday didn't even manage a second week in the top ten scoring just $2.1M to bring its total to $8M.