Box Office: Jodie No, Beatles Yes
The news about this weekend’s movie box office was not the relatively disappointing tally of the Jodie Foster vigilante movie “The Brave One” ($14 million) but the spectacular per-screen average of two movies in limited release: “Across the Universe” and “Eastern Promises.” The performance of the latter movie wasn’t a surprise to me: directed by David Cronenberg and starring Viggo Mortensen, this story of Russian mobsters in London was well-reviewed. The performance of the former, however, a 1960s time warp love story set to Beatles music, did catch me a little off-guard. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have. Just because “Universe” didn’t garner across-the-board raves (except for an in-print ecstasy from the New York Times’ Stephen Holden, who seemed to be having an acid flashback) didn’t matter to its baby-boomer fans. And the college students who lined up to see the movie across the country don’t give a fig about reviews; what counts is word of mouth. Apparently, their roommates all went back to the dorm and told them to go see the “Moulin Rouge“-ish phantasmagoria known as “Universe.”
Maybe. But I would argue that a good chunk of all the people that wanted to see Across the Universe and Eastern Promises showed up this weekend.
It’ll be interesting to see how well they do when they expand.