Katherine Heigl’s Box Office Weekend

Published: 26 July 2009 - Written by gissell77 in section: Entertainment

Heigl, whose ultimate future on Grey’s Anatomy is one of the small screen’s great questions, proved her big-screen worth yet again with an estimated $27 million Friday-Sunday debut for The Ugly Truth.

The romantic comedy, which pairs Heigl with 300’s Gerard Butler, took third in the box office standings behind the guinea-pig-powered comedy G-Force ($32.2 million) and the still big but somewhat sapped Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($30 million).

Here are some more factoids for Heigl to drop within earshot of an ABC exec:

• Not that Heigl or her team need the reminder, but The Ugly Truth is now the year’s third-biggest-bowing romantic comedy behind Sandra Bullock’s The Proposal and the all-star He’s Just Not That Into You.

• To put that previous factoid another way, Heigl opened a movie bigger than romantic-comedy stalwarts Kate Hudson (Bride Wars), Matthew McConaughey (Ghosts of Girlfriends Past) and Renée Zellweger (New in Town) did.

• As a reminder, Heigl is back at work on Grey’s sixth season. But the star to whom the adjective outspoken is typically applied isn’t saying what shape her health-challenged character is in.

• Harry Potter’s ticket sales were off 61 percent from its opening weekend. If estimates hold, that fall will go down as the franchise’s second biggest plunge.

• In the not-great-news department, the Harry Potter with the franchise’s biggest drop, Prisoner of Azkaban, is also the franchise’s lowest-grossing movie to date.

• In the not-bad-news department, the “lowest-grossing” Prisoner of Azkaban made nearly $250 million domestically.

• In the terribly good news department, Half-Blood Prince, after just two weekends, is already at $221.8 million.

• The horror movie Orphan, the weekend’s other major new release, grossed a respectable $12.8 million for a fourth-place bow.

• How low can Brüno go? The Sacha Baron Cohen comedy was down 67 percent from last weekend’s near-historic dive, and clung to a Top 10 finish with a $2.7 million take.

• After three weekends, Brüno has $56.5 million in the domestic bank—a number that would look bigger if Cohen’s Borat wasn’t already well on its way to $100 million in the same time frame.

• Up exits the Top 10 after eight weekends and a $283.6 million haul that puts it behind only Finding Nemo on the formidable list of all-time Disney/Pixar grossers.

Here’s a complete look at the weekend’s top-grossing films based on Friday-Sunday estimates as compiled by Exhibitor Relations: