Weekend Box Office: No love for Ron Howard’s racecars

Written by Vince Mancini / 09.29.13
Thor parties with the Fly Girls while Niki Germanguy pouts.

Thor parties with the Fly Girls while Niki Germanguy pouts.

Rush opened wide this week in 2297 theaters, as Ron Howard tried to sell us the movie-est movie that ever movie’d. Every ad I saw for it I thought Chris Hemsworth was about to turn to the camera and say “Glamour,” as a wind machine blew his romance novel hair like a Creed video. Sadly, America wasn’t really buying, and it only earned a little more than $10 million of its $38 million budget. Poor Ron Howard. Maybe his buddy Brian Grazer can cheer him up with some cuh-caine (B-Graze loves the Bolivian).

Rush expanded in to 2,297 theaters this weekend and took third place with $10.3 million. Among sports dramas, that’s about half of Moneyball‘s $20 million start, and is also lower than Secretariat‘s $12.7 million debut. It’s hard to call this a good opening, though it also would have been unreasonable to expect much more—while the marketing has been strong, Formula 1 racing isn’t of particular interest to most Americans.
The audience for Rush was 52 percent male and 53 percent over the age of 40, and it received a good “A-” CinemaScore. Add in strong reviews (88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), and it’s likely that this holds well over the next few weeks. [BoxOfficeMojo]

Turns out America only likes vroom cars if Paul Walker is driving them. Or if Vin Diesel uses them to kill a plane. Formula 1 cars? Pff, you probably can’t even put truck nutz on those.

Elsewhere, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 made decent money because kids, and Don Jon made nine million, but only cost six. FUN FACT OF THE WEEK: We’re the Millers has outearned The Wolverine, and over a shorter time period. No one really knows how the hell that happened. My guess is, Jennifer Aniston will get to make 10 more bad rom-coms because of it, and when those bomb we’ll find out it was really Sudeikis magic all along.

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Box Office Recap: ‘Prisoners’ Captured All Of The Money

Written by Ashley Burns / 09.23.13
"Biggie Smalls... Biggie Smalls..."

“Biggie Smalls… Biggie Smalls…”

It was another relatively tame weekend at the box office, with only two movies opening in wide release, and that basically always means that at least one of them will do well. In this case, audiences thought that Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal were enough to lure them to the theaters to watch them try to out-shout each other in the thriller Prisoners, which took the top spot at the box office with $21.4 million this weekend.

The other movie making its debut was the absurdly unoriginal Battle of the Year, which starred Chris Brown and Sawyer from Lost as the leaders of a rag tag team of American street dancers looking to take back the crown of the world’s best from whichever generic foreign enemy was chosen for them. Battle of the Year debuted at No. 5 this weekend with a gross of $5 million, which doesn’t sound like much, but since this is just a movie about people dancing, it only cost $20 million to make and it is ¼ of the way to making that back.

I haven’t watched Battle of the Year yet, but rest assured I will have it covered by the second week of December. As for the rest of the box office chart, let’s break it down, FilmDrunk B-Boys…

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Box Office: Insidious 2 Wins Big, Deniro’s Latest Turd Doesn’t Totally Tank

Written by Vince Mancini / 09.16.13
Deniro-The-Family-poster

Tommy Lee Jones was beaten out for poster billing by two kids and a dog.

Insidious 2 was the big winner over the weekend, “scaring up” (see what I did there?) an estimated $41 million over the Friday the 13th weekend, more than three times bigger than the original’s $13.3 million. That made it the second biggest September opening ever, behind the Adam Sandler-voiced Hotel Transylvania, which should tell you everything you need to know about how slow and boring box office news is in September.

Insidious 2 was the fifth horror movie to open number one this year, and the second directed by James Wan and starring Patrick Wilson (the first being The Conjuring). Horror fans love a formula.

Elsewhere, Robert Deniro’s latest paycheck, The Family, didn’t bomb quite as hard as it should have even though no one really liked it:

In a distant second place, The Family opened to an estimated $14.5 million from 3,091 theaters. That’s a solid start for the mob comedy—it ranks second all-time for director Luc Besson, and sixth all-time for distributor Relativity Media. Its audience was 54 percent female and 83 percent over the age of 25; unfortunately, it received a terrible “C” CinemaScore, which suggests it will fall pretty quickly. [BoxOfficeMojo]

Well, at least it probably won’t make its money back. That “83 percent over the age of 25″ stat really says it all. For the over-25 crowd, Deniro is still the guy from Raging Bull and The Godfather. For the younger people, he’s the co-star of bad rom-coms who gets stabbed in the boner. RIP.

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Box Office Recap: Riddick Was Obviously The Big Winner This Weekend

Written by Ashley Burns / 09.09.13
"Grumble grumble, I'm Riddick, grumble grumble."

“Grumble grumble, I’m Riddick, grumble grumble.”

Considering that Riddick was the only movie that opened in wide release this weekend, it was obviously going to be the top performer at the box office, unless people had the sudden urge to finally see The Lone Ranger at the local dollar theater. Still, Riddick’s performance was a tad underwhelming, as the Vin Diesel vehicle grossed just $18.6 million, which is respectable but disappointing considering there was basically no competition.

In fact, this weekend was basically so wide open* for Riddick that the next best performing debut was by The Ultimate Life, which I hadn’t even heard of until now, as it grossed $650,000 in very limited release. Meanwhile, Lee Daniels’ The Butler took second place and another step closer to the $100 million mark with $8.9 million to bring its 4-week domestic gross to a very impressive $91 million.

Check out the rest of the box office results after the jump.

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Box Office: Summer goes out with a ‘meh’

Written by Vince Mancini / 08.25.13

Butler

Going into this weekend, there was a lot of talk about this being the best weekend for movies of the year, with The World’s End (our review) and You’re Next opening wide, and The Grandmaster, Short Term 12, and Drinking Buddies (our review) opening in limited release, all five over 70% recommended on RottenTomatoes. But it seems none of them made much of a dent in the consciousness of Charlie Averagedouche, and they all failed to break $10 million, domestically.

Still, we were left with consolation prizes and qualified successes, such as The World’s End becoming the highest opening film of Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy (it opened slightly lower than Scott Pilgrim, but only cost a third as much to make), and The Grandmaster and Short Term 12 averaging a respectable $18,894 and $15,034 per theater. Overall, the box office was up 16% from the same weekend last year.

(Domestic numbers, based on early estimates):

1. The Butler (The Weinstein Company) – $17,018,000 ($52,275,000)
2. We’re the Millers (Warner Bros.) – $13,500,000 ($91,740,000)
3. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (ScreenGem/Sony) – $9,300,000
4. The World’s End (Focus) – $8,942,000
5. Planes (Buena Vista) – $8,567,000 ($59,591,000)
6. Elysium (TriStar) – $7,100,000 ($69,054,000)
7. You’re Next (LionsGate) – $7,050,000
8. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (Fox) – $5,200,000 ($48,346,000)
9. Blue Jasmine (Sony) – $4,300,000 ($14,799,000)
10. Kick-Ass 2 (Fox) – $4,270,000 ($22,423,000) [Indiewire]

Other notes:

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