Weekend Box Office (December 28 - 30, 2001)

By Sujit Chawla

THIS WEEKEND With 2002 upon us, Frodo and company led the last box office of 2001, as The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring trounced its competitors, rallying up another $56.95 for the Friday-Tuesday long New Year's weekend. So far, Rings has conjured up $174M in only 2+ weeks. With a still potent per screen average of almost $17,000 for the 5-day weekend, Rings has a very, very bright future ahead of it.

Still hanging around in second place this weekend, is the cool caper comedy, Ocean's 11. Starring box office megastars George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, the Warner Brothers release has performed extremely well, racking up another $26.1M, up 22% from last weekend's 5-day take. Ocean's 11's total now stands at a very impressive $137M.

After opening on Christmas Day to a record $10.2M, Sony's biopic Ali rumbled into 4th place for the long weekend, floating to $20M. Starring Oscar hopeful Will Smith, Ali had a per screen average of $8,188, and its total now stands at $40.1M.

Among other films opening on Christmas Day, the Meg Ryan-Hugh Jackman time travelling romantic comedy Kate and Leopold landed in 7th place this weekend, picking up a disappointing $14.5M, for a lackluster $5,908 per screen average. Its total after 8 days stands at $22.1M. After widening its release to a still small 525 screens, Russell Crowe's run to Oscar number two A Beautiful Mind, opened beautifully with $12.6M for an astounding per screen average of $24,057, tops in the top 10.

Looking around the rest of the top 10, a trio of films geared towards the younger generations continued to perform well. In 3rd place from Paramount is the animated adventure flick, Jimmy Neutron, which flew to $22.3M this weekend, bringing its 2 week total to $49.5M. In 5th place this weekend, and now the highest grossing film of the year, and on the doorstep of cracking the all-time top 10, is boy wizard Harry Potter. Still playing in over 3000 theaters, Potter used his magic wand to bring in another $16.9M. In Muggle dollars, his total stands at an out-of-this-world $291.6M. And still in the top 10 after 9 strong weeks is the Disney/Pixar collaboration, Monsters, Inc. Scaring up another $9.4M this weekend, Monsters total now stands at $239.2M.

While there are no official numbers for the 5-day weekend for the following films as of this update, here is the information for the 3-day weekend: Opening just outside the top 10 was The Royal Tenenbaums which opened on 291 screens with an estimated $5.08M. Its per screen average was a powerful $17,453 bringing its total to $8.2M. And opening on 4 screens in New York and Los Angeles was the war drama from director Ridley Scott, Black Hawk Down. Playing to sold out houses, it stormed up an amazing $182,000 for a per screen average of a powerful $45,500.

For a review of The Lord of the Rings visit The Chief Report.

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# Title Dec 28 - 30 Dec 21 - 23 % Chg. Theaters Weeks AVG Cumulative Dist.
1 The Lord of the Rings $ 38,695,582 $ 47,211,490 -18 3,359 2 $ 11,520 $ 155,862,412 New Line
2 Ocean's Eleven 16,907,714 14,716,582 15 3,075 4 5,498 127,735,114 Warner Bros.
3 Jimmy Neutron 15,035,649 13,832,786 9 3,151 2 4,772 42,205,145 Paramount
4 Ali 14,710,892 2,446 1 6,014 34,736,970 Sony
5 Vanilla Sky 11,515,135 12,076,661 -5 2,744 3 4,196 66,558,433 Paramount
6 Harry Potter 10,978,760 7,092,906 55 3,186 7 3,446 285,634,174 Warner Bros.
7 Kate & Leopold 9,725,408 2,452 3 3,966 17,293,941 Miramax
8 A Beautiful Mind 7,780,495 367,151 525 2 14,820 13,711,171 Universal
9 Monsters, Inc. 6,103,901 3,801,516 61 1,701 9 3,588 235,848,871 Buena Vista
10 The Majestic 5,422,482 4,904,339 11 2,361 2 2,297 15,548,437 Warner Bros.
Top 5 $ 96,864,972 $ 94,939,779 2
Top 10 136,876,018 119,543,145 15

Last Updated : January 2, 2002 at 6:15PM EST