Domestic: $50,267,000 61.5%
+ Foreign: $31,513,498 38.5%
-------------------------------------
= Worldwide: $81,780,498
Figures are from
www.boxofficemojo.com and are as of Sunday, June 22, 2008 (today)
The Happening is also the 3rd highest grossing R-rated film of 2008 (it just beat out The Strangers, and ahead of it are Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Sex and the City)
I saw the film for the second time last night, and the theater was half to three-fourths full. I think the film has done very well for being R-rated (restricting much of Night's previous targetted audience to 17 and over). I read where many aren't happy with the film, but I think that's because people have expectations from Night to continue what he does from one film to the next. Yes, this time his pacing was different - I think he's allowed to try new things, and he does. He wanted to do a "90-minute paranoia movie" and he did just that - and a great one!
The first time I saw it I wished he had kept that green was the color of love (regarding the mood ring), but now I understand why he removed it. First, it would have been too much - people would have rolled their eyes at it no matter how fitting it was for the situation and the characters. Second, the idea that neither Elliot nor Alma could remember meant that they had been emotionally apart for quite a while (meaning that their marital problems existed long before the events of the film). Night made the choices he did so that the film would be fast paced - that's what he wanted. He still made room for character moments - Julian's anquish while handing Jess over to Elliot and Alma is one of the better examples of that in the film. Plus, the situation wasn't slow in building - like
Signs. The threat happened more and more, meaning things had to move faster.