Box Office: Horrible Is the Boss of Zookeeper — but Where's Woody?

(2 of 2)

In France, where Allen is revered as a higher-IQ Jerry Lewis — and where Midnight in Paris has earned more than $15 million — a film's financial success is measured by the number of tickets sold. That standard is blessedly constant and does not require box office statsmasters to multiply today's inflated ticket prices by those of bygone years to discover the popularity of new movies relative to older ones. Anyway, it's the yardstick we used to compare Midnight with Allen's highest-grossing films of yore. And we found that, in so-called real dollars, Allen was a reliable hitmaker once upon a time:

1. Annie Hall (1977), $38,251,425 then = $141.7 million today
2. Manhattan (1979), $39,946,780 = $134.7 million
3. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), $40,084,041 = $89.1 million
4. Love and Death (1975), $20,123,742 = $84 million
5. Sleeper (1973), $18,344,729 = $82.7 million

In real dollars, Annie Hall, which won Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Actress (Diane Keaton) and Screenplay, remains Allen's biggest hit — something like the Bridesmaids or Juno of its day — closely followed by his next comedy, Manhattan. Indeed, four of his five real-dollar winners came from his first full decade as a writer-director-star. Since then, only the 1986 Hannah has ooched up into Allen's '70s empyrean. So Midnight in Paris will have to take in more than twice what it has already earned to reach the top five of Allen's domestic hits.

Given the Allen trajectory of this millennium — his previous 10 films, including the modestly popular Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, earned a meager total of $86 million at the North American box office — the reception of his latest work must be warming to Allen and his distributor, Sony Pictures Classics. But in Annie Hall terms, the success of Midnight in Paris is the difference between boutique and boffo.

Here are the Sunday estimates of this weekend's top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by Box Office Mojo:

1. Transformers: Dark of the Moon, $47 million; $261 million, second week
2. Horrible Bosses, $28.1 million, first weekend
3. Zookeeper, $21 million, first weekend
4. Cars 2, $15.2 million; $148.8 million, third week
5. Bad Teacher, $9 million; $78.8 million, third week
6. Larry Crowne, $6.3 million; $26.5, second week
7. Super 8, $4.8 million; $118 million, fifth week
8. Monte Carlo, $3.8 million; $16.1 million, second week
9. Green Lantern, $3.1 million; $109.7 million, fourth week
10. Mr. Popper's Penguins, $2.85 million; $57.7 million, fourth week