Once again, ‘The Hunger Games’ walked away with the weekend box office crown. The film has finished in first place for four consecutive weekends. The last movie to perform this well was 2010’s ‘Avatar‘. Down only 35% from last weekend, ‘The Hunger Games’ made another $21.5 million, which brings its domestic gross to $337 million. Analysts predict that it just might finish its theatrical run around the $400 million mark.
As much as I wanted to see ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ come in right behind the leader, that spot surprisingly went to ‘The Three Stooges‘. The Farrelly brothers’ PG slapstick remake performed almost exactly as it was expected to, wrapping up the weekend with $17.1 million. I don’t see it staying in the Top 10 for long. Another shocker is that ‘Stooges’ gave the Farrelly brothers their third-highest opening gross, which is also their best opening in over a decade. Cross your fingers that Fox doesn’t order a sequel.
‘The Cabin in the Woods‘ drew much less than most other Lionsgate horror flicks. Its $14.8 million opening isn’t terrible, but it’s nowhere near those of, say, the ‘Saw‘ franchise. Box Office Mojo suggests that the generic stock story and characters (which are intentional) seen in the trailers might have hurt the satirical horror comedy. The conundrum lies in the fact that, had the trailers shown any more than that, major plot secrets would have been spoiled. Here’s hoping that positive word-of-mouth and critical praise will inspire others to see the movie despite its generic appearance. Lionsgate has not announced the film’s production costs nor how much the studio paid MGM for the acquisition.
‘Titanic 3D‘ is still going strong. The film only dropped 32% in attendance from its (re)opening weekend. With another $11.6 million, the re-release’s total draw is now at $44.4 million. ‘American Reunion‘, on the other hand, dropped a full 50% in its second weekend. The $10.7 million was enough to keep it in the Top 5, but the rapid decline of the $50 million movie doesn’t bode well for long-term success.
‘Lockout‘ finished more than a million dollars below its low expectations, nabbing only $6.2 million and landing in the #9 spot. Luc Besson-produced movies usually draw several million more than that, but ‘Lockout’ isn’t a complete failure with its tiny marketing campaign and small $20 million production budget.
The limited domestic release of Oscar contender ‘Monsieur Lazhar‘ brought in $120,000 on 19 screens. The $6,300 per-screen average was only trumped by documentary ‘Hit So Hard‘, which opened on just one screen. On 50 screens, sports drama ‘Touchback‘ earned $75,000. The $1,500 per-screen average was just above that of ‘L!fe Happens‘, which finished with $21,900 on 16 screens.
Top 10:
1. ‘The Hunger Games’ (Lionsgate) – $21,500,000
2. ‘The Three Stooges’ (Fox) – $17,100,000
3. ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ (Lionsgate) – $14,850,000
4. ‘Titanic 3D’ (Paramount) – $11,625,000
5. ‘American Reunion’ (Universal) – $10,700,000
6. ‘Mirror Mirror’ (Relativity) – $7,000,000
7. ‘Wrath of the Titans’ (Warner Bros.) – $6,905,000
8. ’21 Jump Street’ (Sony) – $6,800,000
9. ‘Lockout’ (FilmDistrict) – $6,250,000
10. ‘Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax’ (Universal) – $3,020,000
Shayne Blakeley
This is a sad day for all mankind
JM
‘Stooges’ got a cinemascore of B-, ‘Cabin’ got a cinemascore of C.
Shayne Blakeley
Sad state of affairs
Tim Tringle
Then Cinemascore should be ashamed of themselves and look into how they get those numbers. While I haven’t seen The Three Stooges (nor do I expect to before it hit’s netflix or some other service) I can’t imagine a world where that movie is anywhere near as good as Cabin.
Now I know what my parents meant when they said things like, “these kids today…” etc.
Pathetic.
Thulsadoom
Well, I’ve seen The Hunger Games and Cabin in the Woods now. The only other film on that list that I want to see is Lockout.
It’s depressing when anything by the Farrelly Brothers gets watched by even one person in the world, let alone does well at the box office, but such is the way of things.
Then again, who am I to say what’s funny? I never found the original Three Stooges funny, I think The Office is/was boring and pointless and I still think Monty Python and the Naked Gun films are hilarious. 😉 Comedy’s just one of those things that’s impossible to predict.
JM
‘Titanic 3D’ is at $190M worldwide, and is Paramount’s #1 film of 2012.
JM
‘The Raid’ expanded to 881 locations, and came in 11th at $1M.
That’s a per-theater average of $1,138.
In 4 weeks, the Indonesian thriller has kicked 2.5 million dollars of ass.
William Henley
I finally saw Hunger Games last weekend. I would have saw it sooner, but I wanted to finish the book. I must say this – I have NEVER seen a movie follow a book so closely. In many cases, dialogue was taken word for word out of the book. There were a couple of small changes, but they really did not affect the story, and probably would have stopped the movie dead if those changes were not made. In any case, I loved this movie, and it is the perfect example of how a book should be adopted to a movie.
I was surprised to see that many people in the theater for a 10AM showing, and it is still showing on 2 screens at my local theater. So its no surprise that it is in first place again.
As for Titanic, I am interested in it, but may wait for the Blu-Ray (which I have already pre-ordered). Part of the reason is, now that I am older, it is just very hard to sit in a theater for a 3 hour movie.