Eastern Cold Wave Chills Holiday Box Office

The cold chill that has gripped most of the nation during the holidays is having a similar numbing effect in Hollywood, despite the local balmy outdoor temperatures. For the second week in a row, business was dramatically down at American theaters, throwing an eleventh-hour wrench in the industry’s record box-office year.

Ticket sales for the Top 10 films over the four-day Christmas weekend dipped almost 25% over the same period a year ago and bad weather only accounted for part of it. Audiences have simply not warmed up to many of the movies on this year’s holiday menu.

Last year, people were easily lured out of the shopping aisles by such films as “Rain Man,” “Twins,” “Working Girl,” “The Naked Gun” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” all of which went on to record solid box-office grosses.

The “prestige” films of 1989 are doing well in limited release--Oliver Stone’s critically-praised “Born on the Fourth of July” averaged a weighty $39,964 at four theaters during its initial weekend--but movies in broad release are playing to less than packed houses.

The No. 1 film over the weekend was Chevy Chase’s holiday spoof “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” which in its third week grossed an estimated $7.1 million on 1,950 screens. In comparison, last year’s box-office leader “Twins” took in $8.9 million at almost 400 fewer locations.

“Tango and Cash,” a cop-buddy movie starring Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell, took a beating from critics but still managed to finish second with an estimated $6.7 million, while Steven Spielberg’s “Always” disproved the notion that Spielberg movies always open big. The Richard Dreyfuss-Holly Hunter fantasy romantic adventure took in just $3.7 million at 1,016 theaters.