February 05, 2008

Hannah Montana Is Best Of Box Office, Breaks Records For Concert Movies

By Shawn Adler (MTV.com)

The Box-Office Top Five
No. 1 Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert ($29 million)
No. 2 The Eye ($13 million)
No. 3 27 Dresses ($8.4 million)
No. 4 Juno ($7.4 million)
No. 5 Meet the Spartans ($7.1 million)

It was one of the biggest upsets ever: Records fell, dynasties crumbled, and legends were made. Heck, just about the only thing Hannah Montana didn't do this weekend was beat the New York Giants.

Averaging an astronomical $42,459 per theater, Disney's Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, scored $29 million in its debut weekend to claim supremacy at the domestic box office. The 3-D flick starring the world's biggest teen sensation scored this victory on just 683 specially equipped digital screens.

That makes Hannah Montana the smallest release ever to get to No. 1 (trumping Borat's $26.5 million from 837 locations), the biggest-ever opening for a 3-D movie or a concert film and the biggest-ever haul for a Super Bowl weekend (beating a little movie nobody's ever heard of called Titanic). And you thought the Manning family had a good few days.

Although it only narrowly beat The Eye in terms of number of admittances, Hannah was helped by the fact that many theaters charged upwards of $15 a ticket (it was billed as a "special event"). That's little consolation to Jessica Alba, whose supernatural thriller came in a distant second with $13 million.

In its third weekend, 27 Dresses kept wearing well, earning $8.4 million to come in third place. Best Picture nominee Juno, meanwhile, continued to impress, scoring $7.4 million for a fourth-place finish.

The rest of the top 10, however, seemed to suffer from a Super Bowl malaise, especially last week's top two, Meet the Spartans and Rambo, the movies whose core audience (young males) would be least likely to miss the big game. Spartans made $7.1 million to come in fifth place, while Rambo came in slightly behind with $7 million. Both suffered near identical (and disastrous) 61.5 percent drops.

Among other new releases, Over Her Dead Body, starring Eva Longoria Parker and Paul Rudd, finished in 11th place with just $4.6 million.

Upcoming Releases
Vince Vaughn goes on the road with his Wild West Comedy Show, Martin Lawrence goes home in Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, and Matthew McConaughey goes shirtless (again, sigh) in Fool's Gold.