B.O. Breakdown

I thought the NYTimes was saying Two ‘Mightys’ Disappoint at the Weekend Box Office because it makes a good headline. Turns out they just can't count. Evan Almighty brought in $32M, which is hardly a bomb, just a disappointment. They spent $200M on it, so it's going to be a tough slog to make that back.

As for the other Mighty:

The weekend proved much more difficult for another high-profile movie, “A Mighty Heart” from Paramount Vantage. Starring Angelina Jolie as the widow of the slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, “A Mighty Heart” rode a tidal wave of publicity to the box office but brought in only $4 million on 1,353 screens, for $295,200 a screen.

$295,200 per screen didn't seem so bad to me, so I went over to Variety to see what the per screen average was for the rest of the competition:

Among other new openers, Paramount Vantage’s politically charged "A Mighty Heart," starring Angelina Jolie, made the No. 10 spot with $4 million off 1,355 locations in North America.

That translated into only $2,956 per theater for the pic by Michael Winterbottom after Paramount Vantage made an aggressive play at a time when specialty films have been delivering in limited platform release patterns.

(my emphasis)

For what it's worth, I saw A Mighty Heart this weekend and I thought it was excellent. Michael Winterbottom is one of the most exciting filmmakers working today and it's a nice surprise to re-discover Angelina Jolie is an actress, which I'm sure most of us had forgotten.