'A Christmas Carol' Grosses a Modest $31 Million in Opening Weekend

With a massive production budget of $200 million and lofty box office expectations from Walt Disney Studios, ‘A Christmas Carol' became the highest grossing film of the weekend in its opening three days in theatres as expected. However, it came in on the low end of Walt Disney Studios expectations since it managed to gross just $31 million in its opening weekend.‘A Christmas Carol', which stars Jim Carrey as the iconic holiday character Ebenezer Scrooge, unseated the previous number one film in theatres which was the ‘Michael Jackson: This is It' documentary. According to The Associated Press, ‘A Christmas Carol' was shown in 3,683 theatres and grossed an average of $8,418 dollars per cinema.Although the opening weekend numbers for the animated holiday re-creation are relatively disappointing for Walt Disney Studios, it appeared to bounce back over the weekend after grossing an underwhelming $9 million in its opening day in theatres on Friday.While ‘A Christmas Carol' generated modest opening weekend numbers, the critically acclaimed ‘Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push' by Sapphire' averaged a colossal $100,000 per cinema in the 18 theatres that it was shown. The Associated Press is reporting the $100,000 per cinema gross average for ‘Precious' is an all-time record for films opening in a minimum of ten theatres.