DRAGONS Crawl Out of Dungeon

By: Steve Biodrowski
Date: Monday, December 11, 2000

The weekend's big fantasy debut, New Line's Dungeons & Dragons, was helped out by legions of longtime fans who bought tickets, but that wasn't enough to make an impressive dent at the box office. The film landed in 5th place with $7-million. With the film playing in over 2,000 engagements, that gave an average take of a little over $3,350 per screenwhich would tend to indicate that theatres were not selling out across the country. Bad reviews and word-of-mouth should sink the film by next weekend.

A Fandom poll conducted on Thursday indicated a fairly high interest among fans. Out of 108 responses, 21% indicated they wanted to see the film opening day, and another 29% said they would definitely see the film in a theatre; 25% had no desire to see the film at all, with the rest divided between watching the film on home video or cable. The results of a follow-up poll, asking browsers to grade the film, were less impressive. The highest percentage (28%) gave the film an F; 16% gave it an A, and 13% gave it a B, with the remainder divided between C and D. Using a numerical scale (4 for A, 3 for B, etc), that gave the film a total score of 138 and an average score of 1.3 (between a D and a D+).

Meanwhile, several other fantasy titles remained in the Top Ten, two of them in the Top Five. Universal's How the Grinch Stole Christmas remained #1 for the fourth straight weekend. The film took in an impressive $18.5-million, down 32% from the previous frame. Dropping from 2nd to 4th place was Touchstone's Unbreakable. The follow-up collaboration between Sixth Sense alumni M. Night Shyamalan and Bruce Willis is not living up to its predecessor, but it's not doing bad, either. The film was down another 48%, but still managed earnings of $7.5-million.

For the bottom half of the Top Ten, Disney's 102 Dalmatians slid from 3rd to 6th place, earning $6.3-million, down 24% from the previous weekend. Paramount's Rugrats in Paris fell from 4th to 7th, selling another $4-million worth of tickets, a drop of 38%. And Charlie's Angels parachuted from #5 to #9; with a weekend take of $2.7-million, the film was down 46% from the previous frame.