Nick Hoult slaying w/ Warm Bodies: RT:78% WW:$45M!
Quote:
On what will likely be one of the slowest weekends of the year, Warm Bodies successfully counterprogrammed the Super Bowl with a first place opening just over $20 million. The male-oriented newcomers didn't fare nearly as well: Sylvester Stallone's Bullet to the Head bombed, while Stand Up Guys failed to even crack the Top 15.
The Top 12 earned $68.4 million this weekend, which is off a whopping 27 percent from Super Bowl weekend last year. This discrepancy can be blamed on a quiet late January and the lack of a second strong newcomer this weekend.
Including $520,000 from preview shows on Thursday, Warm Bodies grossed $20.35 million this weekend. That ranks seventh all-time among Super Bowl openings, and is generally in line with last year's Chronicle ($22 million) and The Woman in Black ($20.9 million). While it was also off a bit from Zombieland's $24.7 million, this is without-a-doubt a strong start for a unique movie that could have very easily been ignored on another weekend.
Aside from picking a great date, distributor Summit Entertainment put together a really good marketing effort that clearly communicated the movie's intriguing premise (zombie falls in love with human girl, begins to come back to life) while also making the movie look like a lot of fun (always a solid choice to cut previews to The Black Keys' "Lonely Boy"). As expected, the audience skewed female (60 percent) and younger (65 percent under the age of 25); they gave the movie a "B+" CinemaScore, which improved to an "A" among the under-18 crowd.
