Adam Sandler may be getting older but his fan-base shows no signs of slowing down as his latest romantic comedy vehicle Just Go With It grossed an estimated $31 million dollars to became his eleventh number one box office hit. That feat seems even more impressive over the Valentine's Day weekend as Just Go With It had to compete with the teen sensation Justin Bieber who looked for a while as if he was going to defeat the popular leading man, nearly three times his senior. Certainly after Friday's figures came through Justin Bieber's concert movie Never Say Never (which has been picking up some surprising solid reviews) looked set to rule the weekend's charts as it took an impressive $12.4 million dollars on its first day of release. Such figures would usually indicate a $40 million plus weekend haul but Bieber shares a very similar fan-base with the Twilight die-hards who will all rush to the multiplexes as soon as they possibly can, resulting in a hype-movie that will open supremely well but drop significantly in the weeks that follow. It is likely that the majority of Never Say Never's Saturday and Sunday audience were repeat viewers from the Friday night crowd, especially given that cinemascore's movie-polling indicated that most females graded the movie A+. Just Go With It trailed $3 million behind Never Say Never on Friday but took most of that gross back with a strong Saturday showing leading to an epic Sunday showdown with the film's separated by a mere 2,000 dollars in Bieber's favour. This was set to go down to the wire and the ensuing box office battle didn't disappoint with Just Go With It taking $7.9 million to Never Say Never's $7.0 million, resulting in an extremely narrow overall victory of $640,000. It is perhaps important to note however that attendance was much higher for the Sandler/Aniston film given that 84% percent of Never Say Never's gross was as a result of its 3D ticket prices. Just Go With It may have had a tough weekend in taking the top spot but the film is likely to prosper heavily tonight with Valentine's Day playing perfectly into the hands of the film's target audience i.e. dating couples.
ROUND-UP:
BOX OFFICE SUCCESS STORY OF THE WEEK: The first competitive weekend of 2011 also saw a surprise hit in the form of Gnomeo & Juliet which opened strongly with $25.5 million to easily overtake Coraline as the biggest animated opening ever for a February release. The film played in under 3,000, theatres with 58% of its gross attributed to 3-D sales. Its strong showing on each day of the weekend indicates that it will hang on well in the weeks to come and could reach the 100 million dollar mark. BOX OFFICE FLOP OF THE WEEK: With four new major releases and three significant hits, one of the new films had to take the fall and unfortunately it was The Eagle that flopped fairly badly to open with a meagre sum of $8.5 million. Focus Features had hoped that rising new star Channing Tatum would help open The Eagle in the high teen mark but this was probably an ambitious assumption given the film's unfortunate release date. In spite of four new high profile films out in theatres, The King's Speech dropped just 4% from its previous weekends gross to leap over six times its $15 million budget with its $93.8 million total. The film should continue to blossom in the build to the Oscars and will see an even bigger boost if it ends up winning Best Picture. For evidence of this look no further than Chicago which almost tripled its budget in between the stages of being nominated for Best Picture and going on triumph in the main category. The Room-Mate had a solid week easily surpassing its production budget after just ten days on release and No Strings Attached also saw a surprisingly solid 29% drop and performed very well over the weekend especially given that Just Go With It had seemed likely to take away core members of the film's target audience. You can see the rest of this weekend's packed results in the chart below. 1 N Just Go With It Sony $30,514,732 - 3,548 - $8,601 $30,514,732 - 1 2 N Justin Bieber: Never Say Never Par. $29,514,054 - 3,105 - $9,505 $30,256,601 $13 1 3 N Gnomeo and Juliet BV $25,356,909 - 2,994 - $8,469 $25,356,909 - 1 4 N The Eagle Focus $8,684,464 - 2,296 - $3,782 $8,684,464 - 1 5 1 The Roommate SGem $8,126,025 -45.8% 2,534 - $3,207 $25,778,926 $16 2 6 4 The King's Speech Wein. $7,230,790 -6.2% 2,263 -321 $3,195 $93,675,761 $15 12 7 3 No Strings Attached Par. $5,810,291 -27.4% 2,756 -294 $2,108 $60,031,078 $25 4 8 2 Sanctum Uni. $5,661,705 -40.1% 2,789 +2 $2,030 $18,035,075 $30 2 9 8 True Grit Par. $3,785,344 -18.4% 2,072 -830 $1,827 $160,355,029 $38 8 10 5 The Green Hornet Sony $3,673,909 -38.4% 2,090 -943 $1,758 $92,405,961 $120 5 11 6 The Rite WB (NL) $3,252,360 -41.8% 2,207 -778 $1,474 $28,858,297 $37 3 12 7 The Mechanic CBS $3,202,921 -39.5% 1,886 -818 $1,698 $25,418,653 $40 3