Box Office: Bollywood Hoopla
Monday, November 16, 2015 at 1:15AM Amir here, with the weekend’s box office report. As predicted last week, the top two films didn’t change at the high end of the pile. Spectre is doing impressive enough business in the US, but its record-breaking haul in China was the real gain. The total worldwide gross of the film surpassed the half billion-dollar mark. There were four new wide releases, three of which landed in the top ten and, embarrassingly, I hadn’t heard of a single one of them before sitting down for this column, so let’s give each a crack.
Love the Coopers, is a family Christmas comedy, and because all mentions of Christmas in November should be banned, we’ll skip over it—it was right behind The Peanuts Movie in third place. The 33, the Antonio Banderas-led film about Chilean miners did as well as a film about such a dark—literally and figuratively—tragedy can do. The real story, however, is India’s Prem Ratan Dhan Payo. It’s an open secret that Bollywood films do really well without significant advertising, but this one is doing even better than usual. Already having the best opening of all time for a Bollywood film in India in the bag, where it opened on the 4-day Diwali weekend, Salman Khan and Sonam Kapoor’s newest venture has the best opening weekend for an Indian film in the UK and one of the top five best in the US.
The Weekend's Top 5
Spectre $35.4m (cum. $130.7m)
The Peanuts Movie $24.2m (cum. $82.4m)
Love the Coopers $8.4m (new)
The Martian $6.7m (cum. $207.4m)
The 33 $5.8m
On the limited side of things, Angelina Jolie’s By the Sea grossed a dismal $9k per screen—it’s a shame; this film looks gorgeous—and James White, one of the under the radar gems at this year’s TIFF fared slightly better, but it’s hard to gauge its success given it’s only playing on one screen.
What did you see this weekend? Are you excited to see Prem Ratan Dhan Payo?
Reader Comments (6)
"Brooklyn" - which I did like but feels small enough that too much hype might accidentally damage the experience, set expectations too high. A friend pointed out that it has a very odd pace, where the film itself feels leisurely due to the sparse plotting, yet individual scenes often feel rushed or truncated rather than letting us really take everything in.
"The Age of Adaline" - not bad at all, far more unusual and confident than I expected. The inciting incident is perfunctory but I think that was very much on purpose - there's no way to "properly" introduce immortality into a story, so why not just focus on the story itself, character dynamics, etc.
I finally caught up with The End of the Tour on streaming. Jason Segal is as good as had been foretold. Is he still in the awards mix, in anyone's eyes?
Finally, finally saw "Citizen Kane" for the first time (as I make my way chronologically through the classics) and really enjoyed it. And oh my was Mr. Welles strangely sexy in his younger days, but also (obviously) fantastically talented. I know he was nominated for Best Actor but no one ever really mentions his performance much when discussing the movie so that was a nice surprise. Now I just need to educate myself on why this film is revered the way it is. I wish I had time to watch it with Roger Ebert's commentary but, alas, I do not.
Hustler -- i'm not sure he's in the mix but he was shaking hands at the parties in LA this week. He's SO NICE in person and also cleans up really wonderfully. way more handsome in person than he's allowed to be on film for some reason.
Watched "The Intern" and found it a very charming film!
Thank You salman khan is best in latest movie sultan