Bucking the ‘Halloweekend’ trend this year, was ‘Puss in Boots’, the DreamWorks 3-D animated feature that promoted the ginger cat voiced by Antonio Banderas from supporting player in the ‘Shrek’ films to star in his own movie, with Salma Hayek as Puss’s rival and inamorata, the black-furred Kitty Softpaws. DreamWorks Animation boss Jeffrey Katzenberg figured that the audience’s affection for Puss, plus Banderas’ appeal to Latino viewers, should make this tale of two kitties a hit and overcome any Halloween hex for films aimed at the family demographic. Armed with glowing reviews from critics (81% on Rotten Tomatoes) and a healthy A-minus CinemaScore from early viewers, ‘Puss in Boots’ did win the weekend at the North American box office with $34 million, according to preliminary studio estimates. That’s nearly three times the $12 million earned by another new movie, the science-fiction parable In Time, starring Justin Timberlake as a rebel running for his life against the clock, and close to seven times the $5 million cadged by ‘The Rum Diary’, Johnny Depp’s latest sodden tribute to his writer pal Hunter S. Thompson.
But it was the meekest opening for any homemade DreamWorks cartoon comedy of this millennium. (Jerry Seinfeld’s 2007 ‘Bee Movie’ registered the previous low of $38 million; the 2006 Flushed Away, at $18.8 million, doesn’t count because it was a co-production with Aardman Films.) So something was messing with Puss‘s vibe. A black cat, and not Kitty Softpaws, had crossed Katzenberg’s path and put a few jinxes on his movie. In a pre-release teleconference, Katzenberg noted that the top opening for a Halloween weekend had been ‘Saw III’‘s $33.6 million in 2006. “We believe we can exceed that benchmark,” he said. “Anything above and beyond that goes in the win column.” Since most industry swamis were forecasting $40 million or more for Puss, Katzenberg’s figure seemed like the usual lowball prediction that studio executives make about their films’ opening gross. Yet Puss had to scratch and claw to exceed the debut take of ‘Saw III’, and because Puss was budgeted at a relatively lavish $130 million (to a cheapo $10 million for the Jigsaw sequel), all bragging rights are revoked. Animated features needn’t grab the big bucks in their first three days of domestic release. ‘How to Train Your Dragon’, another DreamWorks start-up, opened to $43.7 million and earned nearly half a billion dollars worldwide. This summer’s ‘Kung Fu Panda 2’ weathered a mediocre $47.7 million weekend debut to reap $663 million globally and become the year’s top-grossing animated feature. (Cars 2 is second, with $551 million.) Paramount, the distributor of ‘Puss in Boots’, says it has a two-weekend strategy for the film in domestic theaters and big feline eyes toward a foreign-market smash. Sequels are the cash kittens for animated features, but this one needs stronger numbers to green-light a Puss 2. The coming mosnth should tell how many lives are left for the ginger cat.
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