And then we came to the end. Maybe. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.
After Saw VI abruptly halted the annual Halloween windfalls of Saws I-V—earning $14.1 million on opening weekend, where previous entries averaged over twice that number—Saw 3-D was announced as the final chapter in the increasingly convoluted series. Then again, do recall that Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter was merely the fourth movie in the slasher franchise; the ninth (and still not the last) was called Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday. More likely, promises of a conclusion to the series were made to goose up the numbers and set the table for a future resurrection, and it looks like it worked. While still falling short of the gaudy opening numbers posted by Saws II-V, Saw 3-D far outpaced the last entry, earning $22.5 million to take first place. Last week’s horror champion Paranormal Activity 2 dropped nearly 60%, but its $16.5 million was good enough for second, adding to a $65.7 million gross against a $3 million budget.
In limited release, another franchise came to a close as The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, the last (in Swedish, anyway) adaptation of the popular Stieg Larsson trilogy, took $5,980 on 153 screens, good enough for a healthy $915,000 total. News was a little more mixed elsewhere, as the James Gandolfini/Kristen Stewart team-up Welcome To The Rileys bombed out at $4,500 per screen on 10 screens while Claude Chabrol’s final movie Inspector Bellamy and the acclaimed documentary Waste Land fared better, with $11,200 and $11,600 per screen respectively.
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.
