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Early Box Office Estimates: Horror Suffers another Dismal Weekend

As the dog days wind down, the horror genre continues to struggle at the box office. This weekend saw the release of two interesting genre efforts, the hokey Shark Night 3D, and the highly anticipated found footage feature, Apollo 18: Neither film thrived in their theatrical debuts.

Relativity Media’s Shark Night 3d opened to more than 2,800 screens, but pulled down a meager $8.6 million take. Surpringly, Apollo 18 didn’t fare much better (at all!). Despite hitting over 500 more screens than Shark Night, the film sold an underwhelming $8.7 million in ticket sales.

It’s time for a horror rebound, as our genre has been in a serious slump the last few months.

Fortunately, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, have managed to hold potion in the top 10, though both are experiencing gnificant financial decline. That’s acceptable (and to be expected) for Rise, as the film’s been tearing up the box office for five weeks now. To see Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark plummet so quickly just isn’t acceptable.

Check out the complete box office top 10 estimates below, and note the complete disappearance of Conan the Barbarian and Fright Night!

1. The Help: $14.2 million 2. The Debt: $9.6 million 3. Apollo 18: $8.7 million 4. Shark Night 3D: $8.6 million 5. Rise of the Planet of the Apes: $7.8 6. Colombiana: $7.4 million 7. Our Idiot Brother: $5.1 million 8. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: $4.9 million 9. Spy Kids: All The time in the World: $4.6 million 10. The Smurfs: $4 million

Well there is no doubt that our genre has been on the decline for a while now, however speaking in regards to the #'s brought in by Shark Night... I am curious if this is milar in other areas across the country but when I checked the showtimes for this release, I noticed that within a 40-mile radius each location was only showing the film once per day for the entire first week. Something like this makes no sense to me unless you happen to live in the middle of nowhere and moviegoers happen to be nonexistent. To be clear I

live 30 minutes outde of Manhattan, so for this area these lack of showtimes make not one bit of sense. I am sure this is definitely affecting the returns for the film, but what about the rest of you...is there a milar tuation going on around your area too? A conspiracy of sorts maybe? Hmm could be :-P ...Thoughts?

That's because people are now ck and tired of 3D movies and shitty

POV movie enough is enough already I mean come on now that people know what Apollo 18 is about no wonder it failed .I am not going to spoil it but if y want to know than just go to IMDB.com and type in Apollo 18 and y will see how lame this movie is epic fail.

Apollo 18 was decent but could have been better

I'm not surprised I watched apollo 18 last night and it was a steaming pile of cack, The first hour was boring and the last 20 mins were predictable annoyingly the best bits were shown in the trailer, I have nothing good to say about this, it reminded me of the forth kind, good advert, intresting premise, executed shoddily. I've seen better you tube videos. If you want something milar but better try THE DARK DE OF THE MOON not the best film but way better than Apollo 18

^ Agreed. Saw it last night. Its one of the most forgettable movies i've seen in a long time.Should've been left on the cutting room floor.