House at the End of the Street Flops & Weekend Box Office
By Dale Lavine
It was another slow weekend for the box office around the country, with three debuts topping off at an average of around $13,000,000 – not so bad for two of the movies, House at the End of the Street (Jennifer Lawrence) and End of Watch (Jake Gyllenhaal), but somewhat of a downer for the legendary Clint Eastwood and his film Trouble with the Curve.
House at the End of the Street and End of Watch were both filmed on budgets under what they made opening weekend, so costs have already been recouped – the difference between the two, however, is in the ratings. Jennifer Lawrence’s movie scored an extremely low 13%, whereas Gyllenhaal scored fairly well with an 86% approval rating. It isn’t so shocking, as The House at the End of the Street plays off as yet another by-the-books horror flick – but the film seems almost out of season. Summer months and October are generally when audiences expect horror movies, cheesy or not, to come out – however Jennifer Lawrence’s film was released amidst a month of action and drama, which is presumably why Gyllenhaal’s End of Watch skimmed the top of the weekend box office with $152,683 more than Lawrence.
A sad but honorable mention is Karl Urban’s Dredd, a kind-of reimagining of the 1995 Sylvester Stallone flick Judge Dredd. This year’s Dredd was filmed on a budget of some odd $45,000,000 – and while opening to relatively positive reviews, only raked in 14% of its budget (a measly 6.3 million dollars). Dredd opened up to the number six position in the box office, behind Resident Evil: Retribution and the re-release of Finding Nemo.
Next month aims to be a winner in box office numbers, though. Liam Neeson returns as secret-agent/father in the sequel to smash hit Taken, Tim Burton releases another animated sure-to-be hit, Ben Affleck returns to the big screen in Argo, Paranormal Activity makes another go at scaring audiences worldwide, and long-awaited Bond film Skyfall opens up at the end of the month. It would seem as though September was a relatively lackluster month for movies, but October is hoping to bring the numbers back up.
