Weekend Box Office : ‘Home’ Still Alone at the Top

Early box-office estimates put the weekend’s only major new movie--Eddie Murphy’s comedy “The Distinguished Gentleman”--in second place. But when Monday’s final figures were released, it had fallen to fourth with $10.6 million in ticket sales. It wasn’t a great opening by the inflated standards of this holiday season--when movies like “Home Alone 2” already have grabbed a first-weekend gross of $33 million, or “Aladdin” and “The Bodyguard” opened to $20 million-plus grosses that well surpassed “Gentleman,” even when accounting for the surge of the Thanksgiving weekend.

Nevertheless, the Murphy movie distinguished itself with a solid opening gross if gauged by normal standards. The only hitch in that kind of thinking is that this holiday season is anything but normal: Overall grosses are continuing well ahead of the pace this time a year ago, and “Home Alone 2” has grossed an extraordinary $90 million in 17 days.

Weekend Box Office

Weekend Gross/ Screens/ Weeks in Movie (Studio) Total (millions) Average Release 1. “Home Alone 2” $12.4 2,274 3 (Fox) $90.6 $5,464 2. “The Bodyguard” $11.1 1,806 2 (Warner Bros.) $40.4 $6,151 3. “Aladdin” $10.9 1,131 4 (Walt Disney) $40.3 $9,651 4. “Distinguished Gentleman” $10.6 1,933 1 (Hollywood) $10.6 $5,489 5. “Malcolm X” $3.7 1,249 3 (Warner Bros.) $32.6 $3,020 6. “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” $3.6 2,168 4 (Columbia) $75.5 $1,664 7. “Passenger 57” $1.8 1,751 5 (Warner Bros.) $35.9 $1,062 8. “A River Runs Through It” $1.4 1,043 9 (Columbia) $30.3 $1,367 9. “Under Siege” $1.3 1,445 9 (Warner Bros.) $74.2 $933 10. “The Last of the Mohicans” $804,132 1,077 11 (Fox) $69.1 $747

SOURCE: Exhibitor Relations Co.