March of the Penguins Tops Box Offices

Zinside writes "Yahoo News is running a story stating that March of the Penguins may become the No. 2 documentary of all time at U.S. box offices." From the article: "The film, which follows a pack of Emperor Penguins during an arduous mating season, had grossed $18.4 million by Wednesday and was poised to surpass the $21.6 million for Michael Moore's anti-gun documentary Bowling For Columbine. For 13 months, Jacquet and his crew braved Antarctic temperatures as low as 70 degrees below zero - and winds up to 150 mph - to capture astonishing images of thousands of emperor penguins engaging in a mating and child-rearing ritual that is nothing short of astonishing. The Penguins are a miraculous species, capable of extreme heroism, self-sacrifice, sorrow and unshakable love."

Comments

Re:What does it say about the mainstream audience?

[gbulmash]

There is a meme in certain circles that G-rated films gross higher than R-rated films. Could this kind of flocking (hehe) to see a documentary about penguins be indicative of a trend towards a silent audience demand for wholesome, informative movies rather than violent and crass fare?

In the meantime, the R-rated "The Wedding Crashers" is a summer sleeper as well, running at #2 for it's first two weekends, then up to #1 in its third weekend, then back to #2 this weekend, putting it's tally for less than 4 full weeks at over $144 million. And while "March..." did really well this weekend, it's because it nearly tripled its screen count. Yet vs. "The Wedding Crashers" it had a lower per-screen gross ($3709 vs. $5312) on fewer screens (1867 vs. 3106).

We'll have to watch it longer term to see if it's legs keep up.

What's neat to observe is that Warner Bros. is rolling in the dough this weekend with the gamut of ratings.

This Weekend's Top Grossers
#1: Dukes of Hazzard (Warner Brothers) - PG-13
#2: The Wedding Crashers (Newline - owned by WB) - R
#3: Charlie and the chocolate Factory (Warner Brothers) - PG
#5: Must Love Dogs (Warner Brothers) - PG-13
#6: March of the Penguins (Warner Independent) - G

- Greg

You might also like..

[dasdrewid]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this or not (/me is lazy), but if you liked this film, you might wanna also check out Winged Migration, by Jacques Perrin. It's good on details, and incredibly beautiful. If you suffer a bit from add (/me again), you'll like it cause it's split into regions of the world, so you can take it bit by bit, if you don't think you can stand 2 hours straight of birds flying...