Monday, October 6, 2008

Who's Actually Seeing This Movie?


Am I dreaming?

Foreign sensation "Mamma Mia!" stayed unstoppable at international multiplexes, racking up its fifth consecutive weekend victory with $14.1 million at 4,406 play dates in 47 markets.

The tuner’s taken in a dazzling $377.2 million and kept overall biz healthy during the early fall — a period when moviegoing tends to soften as studios opt for a combo of summer holdovers and smallish rollouts of new pics.

For example, the frame saw domestic winner "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" put the bite on respectable foreign grosses with $4.8 million at only 810 in five territories for a decent per-location average of $5,926 — best among major launches and mostly from $2.4 million in Australia and $1.8 million in Mexico. Paramount’s comedy "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People," with local fave Simon Pegg toplining, opened day and date in the U.K. in first with a moderate $2.1 million at 449.

"Mamma Mia!" opened in first in Italy with $2.8 million as U noted that it expects strong word of mouth even though Italians are usually not fans of musicals. Holdover biz continued to be exceptions with the U.K. rising 25% to $1.4 million in its 13th week for a Brit cume of $123.3 million while Korean grosses slid 25% in the fifth frame to $1.6 million.

"Mamma!" still has plenty of gas in the tank with eight territories to open, including Japan on Jan. 30. Its stunning performance has left Universal with nearly $1.5 billion this year, trailing only Warner Bros. and Paramount at $1.6 billion — keeping the international biz for the six majors 2% behind last year’s record-setting pace, which finished 2007 at $9.5 billion.

Source

1 comment:

Greg said...

Actually, I thought it was a lot of fun...I didn't go expecting anything serious, and the movie came through in spades for me...just some light entertainment, with some reasonably memorable performances.

The day after I saw it, in August, they were releasing a version with the songs subtitled, so that audiences could more easily sing along...that may explain some of the continuing interest the fluffy little thing is getting.

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Viktor is a small town southern boy living in Los Angeles. You can find him on Twitter, writing about pop culture, politics, and comics. He’s the creator of the graphic novel StrangeLore and currently getting back into screenwriting.