Weekend Box Office: ‘Home’ Is Where the Cash Is

Box office numbers have been down this year, but this weekend finally saw some action. The top two movies brought in nearly $89 million, which is especially impressive given that they received mostly negative reviews.

Family flicks will (almost) always do better business than audience-limiting R-rated movies, so it’s no surprise that DreamWorks’ ‘Home‘ finished in the top spot. What is surprising, however, is how much the film earned. From 3,700 locations, the animated picture drew in $54 million. DreamWorks hasn’t delivered an opening of that size since inking a distribution deal with 20th Century Fox back in 2013. ‘Home’ is estimated to close around $180 million, but I expect it to climb even higher because it won’t have any animated competition between now and Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’ in June.

Although they couldn’t top ‘Home’, Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart proved to be a successful pairing. The $34.6 million opening for ‘Get Hard‘ marks the highest R-rated debut for either actor (third-highest for any Farrell movie and second-highest for Hart). Even so, ‘Get Hard’ is expected to slip away rather quickly due to this coming weekend’s opening of the crowd-stealing ‘Furious 7’.

While the original ‘Divergent’ slipped 53% in its second-weekend attendance last year, ‘Insurgent‘ took an even harder hit by falling 58%. Even with the added boost of 3D ticket sales, the sequel was only able to land in third place with $22 million. After ten days, the $110 million YA picture has brought in $86.3 million domestically and $93.7 million overseas.

In its third weekend, ‘Cinderella‘ slid 50% into fourth place. Disney’s $95 million live-action fairy tale has now earned $150 million domestically. Overseas, it keeps plugging along and now sits with $186.2 million. Both ‘Cinderella’ and sixth-place ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service‘ crossed the worldwide $300 million milestone this weekend.

Another big surprise, ‘It Follows‘ rounded out the Top 5. Hot off the film festival circuit and two highly successful weeks in limited release, the indie horror flick broke out onto 1,200 screens. With minimal marketing (I saw a few TV spots, but loads of social media ads), the scare-you-celibate picture was able to pull in $4 million.

Further indie success landed upon Noah Baumbach, who saw his best debut to date. From just four locations, the Ben Stiller/Naomi Watts dramedy ‘While We’re Young‘ grossed $242,000 for a fantastic $60,500 per-screen average. Distributor A24 is pushing it out to a few more markets this weekend ahead of its nationwide expansion on April 10th.

As expected, the widely-panned Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper vehicle ‘Serena‘ had a painfully small opening. From 60 locations, the period piece drama only earned $110,000, or $1,833 per-screen. Softening the blow for distributor Magnolia Pictures is the fact that its pre-theatrical release availability On-Demand has generated approximately $1 million to date for the $3.7 million picture.

Top 10:

1. ‘Home’ (Fox) – $54,000,000

2. ‘Get Hard’ (Warner Bros.) – $34,610,000

3. ‘Insurgent’ (Lionsgate) – $22,075,000

4. ‘Cinderella’ (Buena Vista) – $17,515,000

5. ‘It Follows’ (Radius) – $4,021,000

6. ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ (Fox) – $3,050,000

7. ‘Run All Night’ (Warner Bros.) – $2,205,000

8. ‘The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ (Fox Searchlight) – $2,185,000

9. ‘Do You Believe?’ (Freestyle) – $2,150,000

10. ‘The Gunman’ (Open Road) – $2,045,000

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