'Wedding Planner' Scores Box Office Touchdown
Jan. 28, 2001 -- Jennifer Lopez scored a Super Bowl weekend touchdown with her romantic comedy The Wedding Planner, taking first place at the weekend box office with an estimated gross of $14 million.
Jennifer Lopez scored a Super Bowl weekend touchdown with her romantic comedy The Wedding Planner, taking first place at the weekend box office with an estimated gross of $14 million.
With a new CD and a new movie in the same week, Lopez is bringing off the trifecta that Madonna has never managed: intense media coverage of her personal life, a successful singing career, and a successful movie career.
The Wedding Planner opened with a lower gross than Lopez's previous hit, last August's phantasmagoria The Cell, which made $17.5 million in its first weekend. But that release opened on a less competitive, late summer weekend and had wider appeal to young males. So Lopez's effort to broaden her range to Julia Roberts-style romantic comedy — strategically released on female-friendly Super Bowl weekend — seems like another smart move in her post-Selena career.
The movie's success must also come as a relief to bongo-player Matthew McConaughey, Lopez's co-star, who had threatened to become better known for off-screen antics than on-screen hits.
Not So Sweet For Sugar & Spice
The weekend's other major opening, cheerleader crime comedy Sugar & Spice, had a less sweet debut, pulling in $6 million for a 5th place finish.
Elsewhere in teen movie land, Julia Stiles's surprise hit Save the Last Dance stayed light on its feet, falling only to second place after two weeks at No. 1, with an estimated purse of $10 million. This Romeo and Juliet-meets-Footloose has grossed almost $60 million after only 3 weeks in release.
Steven Soderbergh's awards favorite Traffic, featuring Stiles look-alike Erika Christensen, also held up nicely, falling from third to fourth place with an estimated take of $6.5 million. The drug drama will surely continue its box office roll once Oscar nominations are announced on Feb. 13; and it may be on target to become one of the highest-grossing serious dramas of recent years.
Elsewhere in the Top 5, Tom Hanks's FedEx fable Cast Away is hanging on in theaters almost as long as Hanks's character stayed out on his island. After 6 weeks in release, the neo-Crusoe still pulled in third for the weekend with $8.9 million, bringing its total take so far to a startling $194 million. With the new TV Survivor starting after the Super Bowl tonight, look for Hanks to straggle across the $200 million mark later this week.
And Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, playing on 868 screens, had the weekend's highest gross per screen. The subtitled indie hit has already kicked up over $44 million at the box office, in advance of likely Oscar nominations.