Weekend Box Office: Movie everyone was obsessed with failing fails

By Scott Tobias | March 12, 2012 | 2:38pm

Aux Features Film

After months of breathless anticipation that it would be a giant, historic flop of Ishtar-like proportions—and reviews that seemed largely more engaged in schadenfreude than aesthetics—Andrew Stanton’s expensive adventure film John Carter mostly lived down to expectations, putting only a $30.6 million domestic dent in a budget rumored to be well north of $200 million. Though quietly, off the North American grid, the film brought in a fairly robust $70.6 million from other territories, and has yet to open in major markets like China and Japan, so Disney stock may not be in a Bear Stearns freefall yet. Meanwhile, the #1 movie of the weekend was once again The Lorax, which added $39.1 million to grosses that have climbed above $120 million and will within days make it the top earner of all 2012 films so far. The good news for the week’s other two openers is they didn’t cost $200 million to make; otherwise, the $7 million collected by the single-take horror movie Silent House and the $6.35 million made by the long-shelved Eddie Murphy dud A Thousand Words—putting them in fourth and sixth place, respectively—could not be considered “boffo.”

In limited release, the indie rom-com Friends With Kids did modest business with $5,800 per screen on 374 screens, good enough for $2.17 million, but not the world-beater expected of a movie where three-quarters of the cast starred in Bridesmaids. Despite a title that says, “You will be bored senseless, here’s a promotional blankie,” Salmon Fishing On The Yemen had one of the strongest per screen averages of any film this week, with $13,333 on 18 screens for $240,000. And the Israel Oscar nominee Footnote, which had gotten attention recently when some Iranian officials proved to be sore winners over A Separation, opened strong with $24,050 per screen on two screens.