U.S Box Office Report - 8th - 10th February 2008

1. Fool's Gold - $22M - $22M
2. Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins - $17.1M - $17.1M
3. Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour - $10.5M - $53.3M
4. The Eye - $6.6M - $21.5M
5. Juno - $5.7M - $117.6M
6. 27 Dresses - $5.7M - $65.3M
7. The Bucket List - $5.3M - $75M
8. Rambo -  $4.1M - $36.5M
9. Meet the Spartans - $4M - $33.9M
10. There Will Be Blood - $4M - $26.7M

The latest teaming up of Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson crashes into the top spot with a pretty impressive figure for a run of the mill romantic comedy. Fool's Gold features McConaughey as a laid back treasure hunter and Hudson as his estranged wife who find themselves on the trail of what could be the big score he's always promised her. Fool's Gold marks Hudson second biggest opening movie since her last collaboration with McConaughey, How to Lose A Guy In Ten Days(back in 2003 to the tune of $23M). McConaughey himself scored higher with How To Lose A Guy and the surprise success of Failure to Launch in October 2006.


A solid tally for all concerned, with the only direct competition coming from Juno and 27 Dresses, two movies that have been in the charts for some time now. Fool's Gold will have it's work cut out for it though - next week sees four major releases, one of which, Definitely, Maybe, is directly targeted at the same demographic and will help put a stop to the movie besting the huge $105M taken by How To Lose A Guy.

Martin Lawrence saw success with the Big Momma's House movies and last year's Wild Hogs and Open Season, and he looks to be repeating that here with an opening take of $17.1M for Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins. The movie features Lawrence as the titular hero, a successful talk show host returning to the family home and facing all the usual clichés and life lessons associated with a family anniversary of sorts. Cashing in on the success of similar themed movie from Tyler Perry has paid dividends, especially on Saturday when the film saw quite an increase from its Friday takings total. Curiously, this is only the 8th highest opening for a Lawrence movie.

Hannah Montana takes a pretty big hit in its second weekend - put that down to the fact that many people expected to see the movie end its theatrical run on Thursday, and chose instead to see it in its opening frame (to the tune of a record breaking $31M). The film is well into profit, having recouped its production, prints and advertising budget by last Saturday night. It'll see it's screen count slashed next week, much to the relieve of U2-3D, but could easily see $65M before equalling or even surpassing that total with DVD sales. The Eye just about avoided following the same path of most horror movies - fast buck opening weekend followed by a huge second weekend drop, with a loss of 46% of business from its last frame. It'll score another couple of weekends in the top ten but be on DVD by May. Made cheaply, films like The Eye tend to find stronger success on DVD and these theatrical releases are seen as little more than an advertisement for that DVD release.

Juno is still dug into the charts as it begins to expand into foreign territories. Sitting on an amazing $117M, the film still has the chance of seeing further domestic business should it perform well at the Oscars in just a few weeks. A great follow up for Jason Reitman after his equally entertaining Thank You For Smoking. Ellen Page already has two further films finished and is signed up for at least two more, including Drag Me To Hell, the return to the horror genre of Sam Raimi. Speaking of films that refuse to go quietly into the night, 27 Dresses drops just one place from last weekend as it pushes toward $70M. Facing competition from Fool's Gold this weekend, 27 Dresses still saw a decent weekend to weekend drop. It'll get hit again next weekend but 27 Dresses has further cemented the rising star of Katherine Heigl.

While many probably gave up on The Bucket List a few weekends ago, it's quietly carved out some decent box office for itself, crossing the $70M mark on Friday. There's a strong chance that it will leave the top ten next weekend when faced with four new wide opening movies but it marks something of a return to form for Rob Reiner. Like Juno, The Bucket List has begun to expand into a number of foreign territories and could see at least $50M from that market.

Rambo will be relying on its foreign take to shore up its box office and help it recoup its $50M budget. Like its co-release Meet The Spartans, Rambo is seeing its last weekend in the top ten. Unlike Rambo, Meet The Spartans will see little success abroad (thank goodness) but may pick up a few million on DVD. After Rocky Balboa and now Rambo, Stallone is enjoying something of a comeback and this week signed a two-picture write/direct and star deal.

Expanding further as we get closer to the Oscars, There Will Be Blood adds another 622 location to its tally and $4M to its box office total. It has currently made $26M while still in a relatively limited release capacity.

Elsewhere, Vince Vaugn's Wild West Comedy Tour saw little business (just $500k) from its 962 locations, failing to break into the top ten in the process. Worse still was the Paris Hilton movie The Hottie and The Nottie, at just 111 location, sold roughly 10 tickets for every screen it was on according to /film. One other new limited release was the Colin Farrell comedy drama In Bruges, which made $471K from 28 locations.