Box Office Power Rankings: December 5-7, 2008

cadillac-records.jpgCadillac Records opened this past weekend with a respectable $5,023 per theater and got good reviews. It came in second place in this week’s Box Office Power Rankings behind only three-time winner Bolt, the unstoppable force that nobody cares about.

But because it was only in 686 theaters, it couldn’t make a box-office splash, earning $3.4 million overall and landing in ninth place. And because it was in 686 threaters, it was too big to be one of those only-in-major-cities movies that generate buzz and huge per-theater numbers. (Think Milk.)

If you believe (as I do) that perception plays a role in long-term performance, Sony/Columbia has done Cadillac Records a major disservice. It doesn’t smell like a turd, but on the surface it sure looks like one – yet only because of how it was released.

What might have been? Dreamgirls ($103 million in total domestic box office) opened in three theaters. Walk the Line ($120 million) opened in 2,961. Ray ($75 million) didn’t open wide wide (2,006 theaters), but it still managed a $20-million opening weekend.

Box Office Power Rankings: December 5-7, 2008
Box Office Ranks Critics’ Ranks
Rank Movie Last Week Gross Per Theater Rotten Tomatoes Metacritic Total
1 Bolt 1 8 ($9.8M) 7 ($2.8K) 10 (84) 10 (68) 35
2 Cadillac Records 2 ($3.4M) 9 ($5.0K) 7 (64) 9 (64) 27
3 Twilight 4 9 ($13.0M) 8 ($3.6K) 4 (44) 5 (56) 26
4 Quantum Of Solace 3 6 ($6.8M) 5 ($2.0K) 8 (65) 6 (58) 25
5 Four Christmases 5 10 ($16.8M) 10 ($5.0K) 2 (24) 2 (41) 24
6 Australia 7 7 ($7.1M) 6 ($2.6K) 5 (52) 4 (53) 22
7 Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa 5 5 ($5.1M) 2 ($1.5K) 6 (62) 8 (61) 21
8 Role Models 8 1 ($2.6M) 1 ($1.4K) 9 (75) 7 (59) 18
9 Transporter 3 10 4 ($4.7M) 4 ($1.8K) 3 (36) 3 (51) 14
10 Punisher: War Zone 3 ($4.3M) 3 ($1.7K) 1 (18) 1 (30) 8

Methodology

Culture Snob’s Box Office Power Rankings balance box office and critical reception to create a better measure of a movie’s overall performance against its peers than gross receipts alone.

The weekly rankings cover the 10 top-grossing movies in the United States for the previous weekend. We assign equal weight to box office and critical opinion, with each having two components. The measures are: box-office gross, per-theater average, Rotten Tomatoes score, and Metacritic score.

Why those four? Box-office gross basically measures the number of people who saw a movie in a given weekend. Per-theater average corrects for blockbuster-wannabes that flood the market with prints, and gives limited-release movies a fighting chance. Rotten Tomatoes measures critical opinion in a binary way. And Metacritic gives a better sense of critics’ enthusiasm (or bile) for a movie.

For each of the four measures, the movies are ranked and assigned points (10 for the best performer, one for the worst). Finally, those points are added up, with a maximum score of 40 and a minimum score of four.

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