Opening day: 'District 9' crushing 'The Time Traveler's Wife'; 'G.I. Joe' tumbles

Fanboys turned out in force for "District 9" on Friday, putting Sony's low-budget science-fiction film on track to earn about $35 million over its debut weekend.

The first feature from director Neil Blomkamp, which was produced by Peter Jackson and financed by QED International at a cost of just $30 million, earned a studio-estimated $14.2 million on its opening day.

As with all genre films popular with the Comic-Con crowd, there was likely lots of pent-up excitement and a larger-than-average opening day audience. "District 9" could easily end up performing like the low-budget horror movie "Cloverfield," which made $17.1 million on its opening day but quickly lost its momentum and ultimately earned only double its opening weekend. If "District 9" drops more than 15% today compared to Friday, it will be apparent it's on a similar track.

Nonetheless, an opening weekend over $30 million is very strong for "District 9," given its low budget. Sony bought distribution rights in North America and most foreign territories.

It initially seemed that "District 9" would be in a tight race with "The Time Traveler's Wife," the weekend's other big new movie, for first place, but it is thus far blowing the competition away. Warner Bros.' female-targeted adaptation of the bestselling book sold $7.7 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada on Friday, setting it up for a so-so opening weekend of just over $20 million.

Warner Bros.' New Line division spent $39 million to produce the movie, which stars Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams.

"G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," meanwhile, took a big fall, in part due to its mostly male audience defecting to "District 9," no doubt. Paramount's big-budget event film earned $7 million on Friday, a drop of 68% from its opening day. While its declines the rest of the weekend likely won't be quite as severe, it could easily decline 60% or more on its second weekend, a sign of lagging moviegoer interest in the $175-million production.

So far it has made $83.2 million domestically.

--Ben Fritz

Photo: "District 9." Credit: TriStar Pictures.

Comments

[filmguy]

Great film. glad to see a well acted, strong concept-ed indie-ish film like this do well!

[Sam]

Very good movie. Didn't know too much about it going in (which is the way I like to see flicks) and this one was very impressive.

[carl]

Will there be a sequel to this?

[denro]

I liked it a lot. Very engaging and extremely well done. An impressive director debut. Peter Jackson no doubt was a huge contributor.

[Cdin]

Just left the theater - astounding movie. Unusual, inventive story line. Intelligent. Smart screen play - terse yet meaningful. Lots of subliminal stuff that tweaks the brain.

SUPERB CGI - couldn't delineate between real and artificial. They've perfected it, folks. Aliens were 3 Dimensional, personality AND visual wise.

Music - on TARGET, grandiose, emotional.

I LOVED this movie. Found it thrilling, exhilarating, edge of my seat exciting, not wanting it to end. Reminded me of the quality of "Children of Men."

Pray and hope they come out with PART II - they left you wondering WHAT IF...

[masterpuff theater]

please stop making movies for toy companies, and start making movies for adults. Make movies that don't come from video games, regurgitated japanese fetish objects for infantile minds, and movies that come from dolls made to look like real human beings. Maybe a story IS necessary after all. Just saying....

[Keith]

Ha, District 9 cost 30 million and Time Traveler's Wive 39 million. It costs a lot to make Eric Bana disappear.

[snapperspy]

Great story. FX never took over the film. The director always brought the movie back to the story.

[AJ]

This was definitely a very well directed and well-made movie. It was much better than I expected and it kept my interest throughout the almost 2 hours of it's run. Although it lacked any star power, it made up for it with a solid story and plot. This movie, much like the original Star Trek TV series, explores human nature, except this is a very dark expose of humans treatment towards humans and non-humans. I hope that more mainstream viewers will go see this movie, because this is a very intelligent, sci-fi movie, which has more to offer than neat special effects and formulaic violence. If you haven't seen it yet, go see this movie.

[Alan Dean Foster]

DISTRICT 9 is an example of what you can get when talented people who love science-fiction are actually allowed to make a science-fiction film. Despite swiss cheese-frequency plot holes, the film believes in itself and the flow carries you along.

I hereby sentence all studio executives who think good SF films need a bazillion-dollar budget to sit through a triple feature of DISTRICT 9, PITCH BLACK, and DARK CITY.