'Shutter Island' wins weekend box office with $40.2 million

Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" dominated the box office with a $40.2 million take because there were no other wide releases to challenge it. It's a career best for the director and Leonardo DiCaprio. The victory is sweet for studio Paramount. The studio blamed the slated October 2009 release date on marketing expenses along with suspicion about the movie's quality. The switch generated curiosity among the fans of DiCaprio, Scorses, and horror pics. All fans packed the theaters. Coming in second was "Valentine's Day" which managed another $17.2 million despite the lose of love from the audiences. The movie droped a 69.5% from its holiday debut. This won't effect Warner Bro's plans to make more holiday-themed movies in the future. "Percy Jackson" (number 4) dipped 51%. "The Wolfman" (number 5) lost 68.7%. "Avatar" managed another record-breaking performance in the 10th weekend, dropping only 31.8% for a 3rd place finish. In 4th place "The Ghost Writer" banked a decent %179K thanks to media attention about the director's continuing legal troubles.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/21/boxoffice.ew/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29

As I have said in another blog, you cannot out beat the box office, but I do think that a movie can win the weekend box office because the movie was just released and it was appealing to the movie goers who have already seen the other movies out in theaters. I am glad that, although there was a confusing about the release date and the quality of the movie, "Shutter Island" appealed to its viewers the same way the movie would have if it have been released earlier. I still find it odd that a lot of people put the movies into a sort of peeking order of which one is selling the most. Some people may see that a movie is selling out at the box office and is gaining a lot of money, so they go to see the movie and may not like it at all. I think that when they tell how much a movie is making they also need to put in a description of the movie, so people will know if they will like the movie or not and if the movie is selling out because it is a new movie or because so many other people have gone to see it.