Date: 10th October 2000

The Parents Trap


There was something about Meet the Parents that resembled a raging bull over the weekend, as the Ben Stiller/Robert De Niro comedy became an instant box-office smash with an estimated $29.1-million debut, a record for October.

(The previous record was held by DreamWorks' Antz, which opened with $17.2 million in 1998.) It was also the best opening for any De Niro film in his 30-year-plus career. Entertainment analyst Art Rockwell told Bloomberg News that Parents performed above expectations because of its broad appeal. "It was a question mark whether the youth market would go and obviously it did," Rockwell observed.

Meanwhile, Disney's Remember the Titans continued to gain yardage as it took in about $19.6 million (which would have represented an October record in its own right if Meet the Parents had not been a factor) for a two-week total of $46.2 million. That film, also, has turned out to have broader audience appeal than originally believed. It lost only six percent of its first-week take.

Source: Studio Briefing