Dis-Enchanted

Alright, folks, you’re going to have to bear with me this week. You see, this numbers are in, and they are boring. I know, how exciting are box office numbers anyway, and isn’t my job to make them exciting?

Maybe so, but this week it’ll be harder than most. So like I said, bear with me.Alright, for starters, Enchanted hung on to the top spot with $16.4 million and a $70 million total. That’s down 52%, but everything took a big hit compared to the holliday weekend. Amy Adams’ star continues to rise, as we discussed last week, but I suspect Patrick Dempsey will also find himself in demand as a romantic lead (his next feature role is a the lead in a rom-com called Made of Honor).

Dempsey’s lucky to have clawed his way back to respectability after a brief stint as a teen star, so I’ll take this opportunity to offer him some advise. TV stars are often tempted to abandon whatever show was their launching pad in order to chase the dream of being a movie star. I understand the impulse, but this is a mistake. Compare George Clooney, who stuck with ER for at least two seasons after he began to headline movies, and David Caruso, who jumped the NYPD Blue ship just as soon as he could to do Jade and Kiss of Death, then fell into obscurity before Anthony Zuiker mercifully gave the lead in CSI: Miami. So Patrick, stick with Gray’s Anatomy until you’re sure you’ve got a bankable career. Those viewers are the ones that got you back in the game; you owe them a few more seasons.

Beowulf jumped into the number two spot with $8 million, down 50%, and a $68 million total. Word is the per screen average on 3D theatres is high enough that it’s prompting theatre owners to install the necessary equipment to show more 3D movies in the future. That’s good news for those execs that already greenlit future 3D projects (I’ve even heard that they’re not far from removing the need for glasses, though I can’t imagine how this will work), but the domestic totals still leave me a little apprehensive. Combined with Beowulf‘s $75 million foreign cume, though, is enough to justify the investment.

This Christmas fell to third place with $7.9 million, off 55%, for a respectable $36 million cume. Mekhi Phifer, by the way, is another ER (my goodness that show’s been on FOREVER) vet who has done a nice job of managing his feature career around the demands of the show. Pay attention, Patrick. Hitman dropped 54% to $6 million in its second week, bringing the total to $30 million. Still waiting for a movie based on a video game that is either good enough or makes enough money to justify all the attention the industry gets from Hollywood.

Alright, now we’ve got something. Awake was the lone opener this week, and even with so little competition, it managed to tank, landing in fifth place with just $5.8 million from 2,002 theatres for a $2.9k average. Remember back when Good Luck, Chuck opened to perfectly modest numbers, and I said that it would neither help nor hurt the painfully beautiful Jessica Alba’s career? Well, by itself, it didn’t. But combined with these numbers, and the spotty returns on her non-Fantastic Four fare (Into the Blue anyone?), I would say Alba’s officially in trouble. And to make matters worse, she’s jumping on the Asian horror train about two years too late with her next entry, a remake of the Pang brothers’ The Eye. Hayden Christensen, who already brings plenty of ill will with him thanks to his dreadful turn as Anakin in the last two Star Wars prequels, is barely hanging on thanks to a decent performance in Billy Ray’s Shattered Glass. The good news for him, though, is that his next project is a cool-looking sci-fi flick called Jumper (with Billy Elliot‘s Jamie Bell as the bad guy!) from Bourne Identity-director Doug Liman. February is a dumping ground, but if Liman can make this pay off, Chritensen may find himself in better shape than Alba, believe it or not.