Movies’ seasonal malaise

With only two weeks left for Christmas shopping, Americans may have been too distracted to go to the movies over the weekend. “Analyze That,” the only new wide-release movie, failed to lift box office earnings out of the traditional post-Thanksgiving slump.

Box office estimates fell roughly 50% from last weekend’s Friday-through-Sunday totals and 20% from the comparable weekend last year, according to box office tracking firm Nielsen EDI Inc. “This is typical after the Thanksgiving holiday,” Nielsen EDI’s Dan Marks said. “People are back to work, they are doing their shopping and have other attractions to go to.”

Some smaller films, however, posted impressive opening numbers. Sony’s “Adaptation,” which stars Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper, grossed an average of $57,143 per theater for a total of about $400,000 in seven locations. In addition, the Arenas Entertainment/Universal film “Empire” came in at No. 4, grossing a surprising $6.3 million, averaging a healthy $7,235 per theater in 867 sites.

The film, which stars John Leguizamo, was aggressively marketed to Latino audiences in a $10-million Spanish- and English-language campaign. Essentially a genre film about gangster life in New York City, the movie appealed mostly to a young Latino male audience. The demographic breakdown was 51% Latino and 55% males over the age of 25, executives said.

The movie’s performance demonstrates that the Latino audience can be reached with a well-orchestrated marketing campaign, said Santiago Pozo, head of Arenas Entertainment, which bought the film at the Sundance Film Festival last year for only $650,000.

“Adaptation” also benefited from a specialized marketing campaign, as well as excellent reviews and a marquee cast for the film that re-teamed “Being John Malkovich” director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, whom the National Board of Review last week honored for his scripts for the current film, the upcoming “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” and last summer’s “Human Nature.”

Because “Adaptation’s” unconventional theme about a screenwriter’s difficulty in translating a book into a movie was a challenge to compress into sound bites and movie and TV trailers, it took Sony marketing executives years to fine-tune the campaign. The trailer alone took a year to complete.

As for “Analyze That,” the sequel to the March 1999 surprise hit brought in only an estimated $11.3 million for an anemic $3,884 per theater in 2,635 locations. Starring Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal, the estimated $60-million-plus movie may well have suffered from what studio executives called “sequelitis,” failing to get good reviews or attract a significant audience. The original enjoyed an opening of $18.4 million during a slow spring weekend on its way to a total of $106.8 million, but “That” is highly unlikely to get as far.

MGM’s “Die Another Day” returned to No. 1 in its third weekend, grossing an estimated $13 million, down 58% from the prior frame, for a cumulative total of $120.3 million. “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” was down 69%, coming in at No. 3 with an estimated $10 million for a total of $213.9 million.

Disney’s “TreasurePlanet” continues its steep slide, grossing only $5.7 million, down 53% from its lackluster opening weekend. The film cost an estimated $150 million to make and is a major money loser for the studio. Disney’s “The Santa Clause 2,” meanwhile, grossed an estimated $5.4 million, down 55%, for a total of $120 million.

Revolution Studios’ “Maid in Manhattan” packed auditoriums in previews in 875 theaters. The Jennifer Lopez-Ralph Fiennes movie opens Friday.