--- title: Box Office: Contagion's Got the Fever, but the Movies Have the Blahs description: With 9/11 tributes dominating the news and the TV networks, Americans got their minds off a national catastrophe by watching a movie about a worldwide... canonical: https://time.com/archive/6911849/box-office-contagions-got-the-fever-but-the-movies-have-the-blahs/ author: Richard Corliss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2011-09-11T04:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-22T16:33:45.952Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Box Office: Contagion's Got the Fever, but the Movies Have the Blahs og:description: With 9/11 tributes dominating the news and the TV networks, Americans got their minds off a national catastrophe by watching a movie about a worldwide... og:url: https://time.com/archive/6911849/box-office-contagions-got-the-fever-but-the-movies-have-the-blahs/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc76c91f6ec74e53f/698a4bbb16d884d0a7c3d8c1/360_contagion_0911.jpg?branch=production&width=750&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: 360_contagion_0911.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Box Office: Contagion's Got the Fever, but the Movies Have the Blahs twitter:description: With 9/11 tributes dominating the news and the TV networks, Americans got their minds off a national catastrophe by watching a movie about a worldwide... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc76c91f6ec74e53f/698a4bbb16d884d0a7c3d8c1/360_contagion_0911.jpg?branch=production&width=750&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Box Office: Contagion's Got the Fever, but the Movies Have the Blahs by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) Sep 11, 2011 4:00 AM UTC  Anna Jacoby-Heron and Matt Damon star in Contagion Anna Jacoby-Heron and Matt Damon star in ContagionClaudette Barius / Warner Bros / Courtesy Everett Collection by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) Sep 11, 2011 4:00 AM UTC With 9/11 tributes dominating the news and the TV networks, Americans got their minds off a national catastrophe by watching a movie about a worldwide plague. _Contagion_, the killer-virus procedural directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard and Jennifer Ehle, won the weekend at the North American box office by earning $23.1 million, according to early studio estimates. An upmarket, adult-skewing version of _Resident Evil: Afterlife_, which had taken in $26.5 million this weekend last year, _Contagion_ attracted the over-25 set in droves: a seismic, geriatric 81% of the total audience. But the film’s disappointing B- rating from opening-night moviegoers polled by CinemaScore suggests that _Contagion_ may not stay around much longer than Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in the movie. (She dies after five minutes.) [(See how _Contagion_ gets the science right.)](https://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2092269,00.html) If the spectacle of Oscar-winning stars coughing and then kaputting at pandemic rates wasn’t depressing enough, Hollywood could get the blues staring at the latest stat sheet. The weekend is projected to gross a minuscule total of $80.83 million, the lowest total take of 2011\. Think of it: more customers braced the elements to buy tickets during Hurricane Irene two weeks ago than on this mostly balmy September frame. The new entries enticed few patrons. Only $5.6 million worth paid to watch Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton as brothers pursuing a mixed-martial-arts title and pummeling each other’s hardbodies in the family-fighting drama _Warrior_. Nick Swardson’s R-rated porn-film parody, _Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star_, hit theaters with the equivalent of a terrorism alert — a perfect zero rating on the Rotten Tomatoes aggregate site of movie reviews — and managed a teeny-weeny $1.5 million at 1,500 theaters. Kevin Hart’s comedy-concert film, _Laugh at My Pain_, did quite a bit better ($2 million) in just 97 venues. [(See Mary Pols’ review of the implausible _Warrior_.)](https://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2092314,00.html) Aside from _Contagion_, the only bright spot on the top 10 list was another movie for adults. _The Help_, the inspirational interracial weepie that has earned $137.1 million since opening Aug. 10, dropped to second place after three weeks at No. 1\. The movie nonetheless scored the longest daily run in the top spot — 25 days — since _The Sixth Sense_ in 1999, per Box Office Mojo. Its run also marked the first time since _Avatar_ that a film has occupied either the first or second slot for as long as five weeks. Those are impressive records and bode well for this generously reviewed film’s chances in the awards season. Still, Hollywood needs more than _The Help_ to lure its core sectors of teens and young adults. Those crucial demographics ignored movie theaters for the first four months of the year, came back in force from late April (_Fast Five_) through early August (_Rise of the Planet of the Apes_) but have again gone into hiding. If the trend continues, and young audiences stay away except when the weather warms up, the film industry will face its own crippling, if not fatal, contagion. Here are the Sunday estimates of this weekend’s top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by Box Office Mojo: 1\. _Contagion_, $23.1 million, first weekend 2\. _The Help_, $8.7 million; $137.1 million, fifth week 3\. _Warrior_, $5.6 million, first weekend 4\. _The Debt_, $4.9 million; $22 million, second week 5\. _Colombiana_, $4 million; $29.8 million, third week 6\. _Rise of the Planet of the Apes_, $3.9 million; $167.8 million, sixth week 7\. _Shark Night 3D_, $3.5 million; $14.8 million, second week 8\. _Apollo 18_, $2.9 million; $15 million, second week 9\. _Our Idiot Brother_, $2.8 million; $21.4 million, third week 10\. _Spy Kids: All the Time in the World_, $2.5 million; $34.2 million, fourth week [See Richard Corliss’s dispatches from the Venice Film Festival.](https://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2092435,00.html) [See the 100 best movies of all time.](https://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1953094,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6911849/box-office-contagions-got-the-fever-but-the-movies-have-the-blahs/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6911849/box-office-contagions-got-the-fever-but-the-movies-have-the-blahs/"},"headline":"Box Office: Contagion's Got the Fever, but the Movies Have the Blahs","datePublished":"2011-09-11T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-22T16:33:45.952Z","description":"With 9/11 tributes dominating the news and the TV networks, Americans got their minds off a national catastrophe by watching a movie about a worldwide...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6911849/box-office-contagions-got-the-fever-but-the-movies-have-the-blahs/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc76c91f6ec74e53f/698a4bbb16d884d0a7c3d8c1/360_contagion_0911.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Corliss","url":"https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc76c91f6ec74e53f/698a4bbb16d884d0a7c3d8c1/360_contagion_0911.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"360_contagion_0911.jpg","caption":"Anna Jacoby-Heron and Matt Damon star in Contagion","creditText":"Claudette Barius / Warner Bros / Courtesy Everett Collection","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6911849/box-office-contagions-got-the-fever-but-the-movies-have-the-blahs/","name":"Box Office: Contagion's Got the Fever, but the Movies Have the Blahs"}}]}] ```