Couples Retreat opened to a powerful $34.3M, way more than most industry expectations of $24M-$27M, and slightly higher than my $32M prediction. The film has been getting trashed by critics but apparently audiences disagree and so do I (read my review here). Retreat was positioned to outperform this weekend due to several factors; it was the only new wide release of the frame and new comedy offerings have been sparse over the last few weeks. Vince Vaughn is also a huge box office draw when starring in comedies. Here’s a look at how his last few comedies performed at the box office. 

 

With no new comedies set to come out next weekend, Couples Retreat should hold up fairly well in the weeks ahead and may find its way to the century club with $100M+.

The little indie film that could, Paranormal Activity, grossed an astounding $7.9M on only 159 screens for a whopping $49.4K average per screen. In comparison, Couples Retreat collected $11.4K per screen. Paranormal will be expanding into more and more theatres in the next couple of weeks and is set to dominate over the Halloween season. Not since The Blair Witch Project lit up the box office in 1999 has an extremely low budget (it was made for $11K) indie fright flick had this much buzz and it is going to rake in a ton of money. In fact, Paranormal Activity may be the film that finally topples the Saw franchise. Those films come out every October and dominate the Halloween season opening to about $30M each time. Paranormal Activity will more than likely eat into Saw VI’s debut frame and steal some of its thunder. I can’t say that I’m disappointed by that. The Saw franchise is one cash cow that I would love to see be put out to pasture. 

Among holdovers, Zombieland slipped a little more than I expected; down 40% for the frame, the horror comedy took in another $14.8M bringing its total to $47.6M after 10 days. Disney Pixar’s Toy Story 3-D double feature held up well in its last weekend of release, dropping 38% to collect another $7.8M. This was slightly less than my forecast for a 35% drop. The Toy Story rerelease has banked $22.8M in 10 days, fairly impressive seeing as these films have been available on DVD for years. Never underestimate the power of Buzz, Woody and Pixar. In fact I’ll go out on an early limb here and say that Toy Story 3 will be the highest grossing film of next summer. To see how the rest of the top 10 shaped up and how the rest of my predictions for the frame fared, check out the chart below.

Be sure to come back Thursday for my predictions for this weekend’s releases, Where the Wild Things Are, Law Abiding Citizen and The Stepfather.

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