Your Oscar Sunday three-day numbers…

Title (New Releases in Bold)                      Weekend                   Total

Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion         $13,000,000            $48,099,000

16 Blocks                                                       $11,655,000             $11,655,000

Eight Below                                          $10,268,000            $58,767,000

Ultraviolet                                                     $9,000,000                $9,000,000

Aquamarine                                                  $7,500,000                $7,500,000

The Pink Panther                                   $7,000,000              $69,785,000

Dave Chappelle’s Block Party                   $6,516,000                $6,516,000

Date Movie                                           $5,125,000              $40,703,000

Curious George                                      $4,444,000              $49,227,000

Firewall                                                $3,605,000              $42,515,000

Final Destination 3                                 $3,200,000              $49,679,000

Brokeback Mountain                                       $2,514,000              $78,906,000

Family Reunion opened bigger than its predecessor, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, and, as expected, fell further in its second frame.  To put its decline in perspective, it held one percentage point better than last year’s The Dukes of Hazzard, which was poorly reviewed, generally disliked by mainstream audiences and ultimately considered a minor box office disappointment despite opening to over $30 million.  What Family Reunion doesn’t have in common with Dukes is a bloated budget; costing a mere $6 million to produce, the film was in profit last weekend even after adjusting for the vagaries of Hollywood accounting.  In other words, Lionsgate will live with Tyler Perry’s chitlin’ flicks being front-loaded phenomena so long as they continue to break $20 million on opening weekend.

Bruce Willis’s 16 Blocks was the beneficiary of some surprisingly positive reviews, but still opened to only a million better than last year’s heavily panned (and unjustly so) Hostage.  While this signifies that Bruno still has a built-in audience when cast as an action film lead, it also means that studios will now seek to pair him with an equally marketable actor or phase him out of the movie star business entirely.  In a way, Willis’s ho-hum consistency is akin to Clint Eastwood’s run in the late 1980’s before he retooled his image with Unforgiven; for years, Eastwood turned up in generic box office also-rans like Heartbreak Ridge, The Dead Pool (the lamest of the Dirty Harry films) and Pink Cadillac before bottoming out with The Rookie in 1990.  Willis is a little different due to his willingness to work for scale in low-budget fare, but his studio choices smack of the same timidity.  Of the old-school action film stars, Willis is the only one with a shot at graceful longevity; it’d be nice to see him jumpstart a project like A Walk Among the Tombstones, which could be both a mainstream success and a prestige grab at the Best Actor trophy.  That’d be far preferable to watching him limp his way through the forever-in-development Die Hard 4.  Then again, it took Eastwood one installment too many to walk away from Dirty Harry.

Screen Gems did their best to derail Kurt Wimmer’s Ultraviolet, but the film still found its hard-core action audience.  It’ll be interesting to see if this one courts as sizable a cult following as the director’s previous Equilibrium, which also featured a number of masterfully choreographed fight sequences.

I know someone who paid to see Aquamarine this weekend for all the wrong reasons.  Had Fox skewed their marketing efforts more aggressively toward the pedophile demographic, they might’ve had a monster hit on their hands.  What a missed opportunity.

Dave Chappelle’s Block Party may be the biggest disappointment of the weekend.  Even with overwhelmingly glowing notices from critics and a high profile promotional effort from the no longer reclusive star, it still did less per screen than Family Reunion and looks as if it will struggle to reach $20 million domestic.  It could be that the film’s target demographic is waiting for the DVD, or that the alternative hip-hop musical lineup scared off white audiences.  In any event, people are missing the year’s most jubilant film while turning out in unacceptable numbers to see The Pink Panther and, worse, Date Movie.  Way to send the wrong message, idiots.

In the interest of ending the recap on a positive note, Tsotsi was off a mere 1% in its second weekend after adding one measly screen.  A second straight week with a five-figure per screen has to be encouraging to Miramax.  Should the film win Best Foreign Film this evening as expected, a much wider release will surely follow.

Next week brings The Hills Have Eyes, Failure to Launch and Disney’s The Shaggy Dog remake.