Aak! Aaa-aa-aak! Klaa-aaak!
For those of you who don’t speak dolphin, those series of squeaks and clicks translate to, “Take that, you bipedal excuses for thespians! Dolphins rule!”
And so they do—for a weekend, at least.
Dolphin Tale, the heartwarming story of a lovable ocean mammal who (with a little help from some bipeds) learned how to swim without a tail, swam to the top of the box office this week with $14.2 million. That’s $10 million more than Flipper—the only other cetaceous-themed film I’m aware of—mustered back in 1996, and enough to buy a whole lotta tuna.
Not that Dolphin Tale had too much competition. The top three movies were all holdovers, with Brad Pitt’s highly regarded Moneyball landing in second place ($12.5 million) and The Lion King dropping to third ($11.1 million).
But Courageous fans, take heart. Your favorite new flick from the Christian movie powerhouse Sherwood Baptist Church made an estimated $8.8 million over the weekend, putting it in a virtual dead heat with the cancer comedy 50/50 for fourth place. Not impressed? Keep in mind that Courageous opened on far fewer screens (1,161, compared to 2,458 for the Seth Rogen-fronted flick, per boxofficemojo.com) and boasted a fraction of the marketing budget. The Christian film had the biggest per-screen take (nearly $7,600) of any wide release. And, if loads of churchgoers headed to the theaters after Sunday School this weekend, there’s a good chance Courageous could claim fourth place outright.
Elsewhere, Dream House proved to be something of a nightmare, earning a paltry $8.2 million to finish sixth. But it did do better than What’s Your Number? Turns out, the film’s number was 5.6 million, as in the number of dollars poor, unsuspecting filmgoers forked out to see this messy movie.
If only its makers had sought fit to put a dolphin on the payroll, it might’ve done better. Aaak!
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