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The Secret in Their Eyes: Every year the Best Foreign Language Oscar winner tries to cash in on the indie cred that comes with that title, and this Argentinean crime drama is doing a pretty solid job of that. It’s already expanded to 155 theaters and doesn’t seem to be slowing down yet, as it’s already made almost $3.5 million and could make it to $5 or even 6 million before it’s done.

That’s an impressive take for a Foreign Language Oscar winner. Only three such films have broken $5 million since the anomaly that was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The Counterfeiters came in at $5.5 million, Nowhere in Africa hit $6.2 million, and The Lives of Others broke out to $11.3 million. Considering that Secret’s American take is gravy considering it’s made more than $20 million in the rest of the world, but it’s still a nice number as far as gravy goes.

Major Releases (100+ Theaters):

Babies: Speaking of documentaries about adorable animals, Babies was trying to be this year’s March of the Penguins, except SPOILER ALERT: instead of penguins, it’s about babies. Turns out that people aren’t as willing to shell out their cash on something that they can find in their own baby carriage, and Babies hasn’t been the runaway success that Focus Features execs were praying it would be. Still in its first month of release, it’s already made more than $6 million, which is undoubtedly more than Focus paid for it.





Has anyone ever heard of a documentary being frontloaded? Babies might be the only non-Michael Moore doc to claim that term, but the numbers don’t lie. Opening on Mother’s Day weekend on 534 theaters, Babies made more than $2.1 million, more than a third of its total thus far. It dropped 53% its second weekend, an awful number for a family film. Still, nobody’s crying about this number, except perhaps the babies, but really, who cares about babies?

Kites: I was really hoping that this film would follow the trend of Oceans and Babies by just being about kites, but alas, it’s some kind of action romance movie “remixed” by Bret Ratner (a phrase that gives me nightmares). Clearly people were less completely unaware of this film’s existence than I was, as it very nearly cracked $1 million its opening weekend. Apparently the original pre-Ratner version was a huge hit in India, and there’s a small niche market in this country for Bollywood films. Of course, niche markets usually lead to huge drop-offs for films, so it’s not surprising that Kites dropped a Tyler Perry-esque 69% its second weekend. That gives it a total of $1.475 million, and while $2 million isn’t out of the question, anything more than that would be a big surprise.

Notable Minor Releases(<100 Theaters)

Harry Brown: Not all “old man takes revenge with guns” films act the same, and Harry Brown is no Taken. Still, its numbers far aren’t embarrassing, just underwhelming, but if it expands beyond its current 60 theater count it might be able to make up some ground. So far the Michael Caine vehicle has made just over $1 million, which against a budget of $7.3 million is a bit concerning, but not too awful considering it looks like it will continue to expand. That plus DVD money will probably make this a win for Samuel Goldwyn, but not the hit they might have been hoping for.

Human Centipede: I find the fact that anyone actually paid money to see this movie a little horrifying, and clearly I’m not the only one who was not excited about the idea of watching girls stitched to each other in the most disgusting way you can think of. This gross-out horror film has continued to expand but isn’t making much bank, sitting with about $136,000 after four weeks of release. IFC tries every once in a while to expand a film beyond two screens, and this attempt has (pardon the disturbing pun) bitten them on their ass. It likely won’t expand much past its current theater count of 19, and $200,000 seems to be the ceiling for Human Centipede. Oh, also, there’s a sequel, so we’ve got that to look forward to.

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