Posted on 05/21/2006 1:11:45 PM PDT by Mr. Blonde
All the protests and all the bad reviews could not prevent "The Da Vinci Code" from recording a $224 million worldwide opening, the second-biggest debut ever at the global box office, its distributor said on Sunday.
The controversial adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling novel, the story of a Vatican cover-up involving Jesus Christ and his supposed offspring, sold about $77 million worth of tickets at movie theaters in the United States and Canada during its first three days, according to Columbia Pictures.
Box-office watchers had predicted a North American opening of between $50 million and $80 million for the most eagerly awaited movie of the year.
The biggest North American opening this year had been $68 million for "Ice Age: The Meltdown" seven weeks ago. But "The Da Vinci Code" numbers were still far from the $115 million record held by 2002's "Spider-Man."
"The Da Vinci Code" earned about $147 million overseas, the biggest international opening ever. The previous record was last year's "Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" with $145 million, Columbia said.
The total haul of $224 million ranks No. 2 behind the $253 million tally for the "Star Wars" movie, the studio said.
Columbia Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp ., released the $125 million film in 90 foreign markets, following its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday.
The strong sales came despite -- or because of -- an onslaught of protests and publicity not seen since another religious movie, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," earned $84 million domestically during its first weekend in February 2004. It grossed $612 million worldwide.
Brown's fictional premise -- that Jesus Christ had a child with Mary Magdalene and that their blood line survived through the ages -- was a huge hit at bookstores, with more than 40 million copies sold around the world.
But some Christians, particularly Catholics, were angered by the story and have mounted a high-profile offensive against director Ron Howard's movie adaptation, which stars Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou.
A Catholic lay organization, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, took out full-page ads in USA Today on Friday calling for worshipers to stage prayer vigils outside at least 1,000 theaters nationwide.
Other church groups have welcomed the opportunity to use the film as a starting point for discussion about the Bible, as has American Atheists, which says the same level of scrutiny applied to the book and film also should be used to question all other religious claims.
On the heels of the Cannes premiere of "The Da Vinci Code," critics joined the chorus of naysayers, overwhelmingly lambasting it as "grim," "unwieldy" and "plodding." It did get a respectable review from America's best-known movie critic, Roger Ebert, who called it "preposterously entertaining."
Sony, the film's producer Imagine Entertainment, and the movie's stars have stressed that the movie is merely entertainment -- and moviegoers appeared to agree.
"The book became more than a book and the movie became more than a movie," said Valerie Van Galder, Columbia's president of domestic marketing. "It became a perfect storm."
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Don't see how anyone can doubt that this film will be a monster hit.
It might not have great legs. X Men III comes out next week, and it should do well. And the week after The Break Up comes out, and you can't bet against Vince Vaughn. He draws really well among people who have nothing better to do than go to the movies...Like me.
This makes me ill.
The movie has done very well in overseas countries than the US. I suspect Europeans etc have flocked to see it.
I think it says more about them rather than the Americans.
And why wouldn't they. I think the movie was tailor made for Anti Christ Europe. Wonder how it did in the Islamic countries .. Can we now expect Hollywood to make a movie that shows Mohammed procreated with 9 year old girls ?
You going to write the blockbuster novel that they can base it on?
Well, as I predicted: It's Monday, the movie did pretty well, Christianity hasn't collapsed, and the faithful remain devoted to Christ.
And I happily wasn't struck down by lightning when I left the movies. :)
Me either! I had fun, a good treasure hunt mystery film.
I don't think either X3 or Break Up will seriously impact DVC. You're really talking about movies with 3 different target audiences, a suspense thriller vs comicbook action vs romantic comedy. As far as target audience is concerned DVC is basically running uncontested until deep into the normal falloff cycle of movie revenues.
But in the summertime the big audience is teens and college students who are out of school without much to do. They will all be attracted to each of these films. The question is what will they be going to see when given the choice between X3, The Break Up or DVC?
Doesn't matter. That demographic wouldn't go see DVC if it wasn't up against X3 or Break Up. That's the smart part of the timing for DVC, it's not a traditional summer blockbuster (though given how well the book sold it was obviously going to be a blockbuster) and therefore isn't competing directly (there's always some competition for screen space of course, but in the modern age of megaplexes that competition is a lot less fierce) with the summer blockbuster fair. Figure it will do the standard 1/3 per weekend dropoff, I don't think it's going to be one of those rare movies that drops off less than that (or rarer still grows audience for a week or two), but its core audience isn't being tapped by any other movies so it's not going to get slammed out of the theaters by normal summer movies.
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