The Spirit Finishes #9 in Weekend Box Office

In its opening weekend, The Spirit was beaten by a dog. And Adam Sandler. And Brad Pitt. And Tom Cruise, Jim Carrey, Will Smith, a talking mouse and Keanu Reeves.

The Frank Miller-directed adaptation of Will Eisner’s iconic comic book hero, The Spirit, landed at #9 for the Christmas Holiday weekend, bringing in only $6.5 million at the domestic box office. Adding in its Christmas Day box office, the film just barely cleared the $10 million mark, at $10.3 million. Per theater, the film’s average was $2,593, compared to Marley and Me’s $10,632 per screen.

Despite an aggressive advertising campaign for the film, The Spirit has received mostly negative reviews (only 16% are positive on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes).

The Spirit was Lionsgate’s second superhero-based film release in December that performed very poorly at the box office (Punisher War Zone opened on December 5th, and did not clear $10 million in its box office run).

On the whole, the American box office was up 15% compared to last year’s Christmas weekend.

According to Exhibitor Relations, the top films for December 26-28 were:
1. Marley & Me, $37 million
2. Bedtime Stories, $28.1 million
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, $27.2 million
4. Valkyrie, $21.5 million
5. Yes Man, $16.5 million
6. Seven Pounds, $13.4 million
7. The Tale of Despereaux, $9.4 million
8. The Day the Earth Stood Still, $7.9 million
9. The Spirit, $6.5 million
10. Doubt, $5.7 million