Halloween played a trick on Hollywood studios this weekend, scaring away moviegoers Friday night.
Total box-office receipts of $85 million were down nearly 37% compared with the same weekend last year, according to results tracker Media by Numbers. Still, Walt Disney Co.'s uplifting "High School Musical 3" bounced back Saturday to reclaim its front row seat at the box office for a second straight weekend, with an expected three-day total of $15 million in ticket sales.
"This is the type of film people want to see right now," Chuck Viane, Disney's president of domestic distribution, said Sunday. Although it dropped 64% from last weekend, Viane still gave the G-rated film's performance an "A" because it has rung up more than $61 million in sales domestically and more than $140 million worldwide.
An analysis of the weekend numbers for "High School Musical 3," however, highlighted Hollywood's Halloween horror. Disney's first-place film squeaked out $1.7 million in sales Friday, Viane said, before getting a boost with $8.2 million in receipts Saturday.
"We all got hurt by Halloween being on Friday. The whole industry felt it," said Steve Bunnell, distribution chief for Weinstein Co., which estimated that its latest release, the R-rated comedy "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," would finish the weekend in second place, with $10.7 million in ticket sales.
The last time Halloween fell on a Friday was 2003, and it poses a more frightening scenario for studios in 2009 when the holiday surfaces on Saturday, which is the biggest day of the week for ticket sales.
The weekend saw three films vying for second place: Weinstein's "Zack and Miri," Lionsgate's horror movie "Saw V" and Universal Pictures' "The Changeling," a tale of how the Los Angeles Police Department handled the 1920s abduction of a 9-year-old boy.
"Zack and Miri Make a Porno" encountered resistance in some regions because of the word "porno" in the show's title. The film, directed by Kevin Smith and starring Seth Rogan and Elizabeth Banks, was rejected by at least one theater chain, in Utah, but played in 2,735 theaters.
"It was an unwanted controversy. It was surprising to us that we ended up in that debate," Bunnell said. The film is about two cash-strapped friends who scheme to make a porn movie to get them out of their money jam.
"We thought people would realize that it was a joke, that this was a comedy," he said.
