Talk about a light weekend at the box office. Almost none of the movies, new or old, hit their projections. The most noteworthy statistic of the week is that ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ crossed the domestic $400 million mark and is closing in on the worldwide $1 billion mark.
‘The Expendables 2‘ debuted in the #1 spot with $28.7 million. Even after adding Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Damme and Liam Hemsworth (anyone else wondering what the hell he’s doing in this movie?), the sequel is down considerably from the $34.8 million that ‘The Expendables‘ opened with in 2010. Perhaps this is a sign that Chuck Norris makes for a better joke than an action star.
‘The Bourne Legacy‘ dropped a painful 55.4%, but its $17 million second weekend was still enough to land in the #2 spot, ahead of the other three new nationwide releases. When you add its cumulative $69.5 million domestic total with foreign ticket sales, ‘Legacy’ is now near the worldwide $100 million mark after ten days.
Coming in at third place was the stop-motion animated ‘ParaNorman‘. Although it opened behind 2009’s ‘Coraline‘, based on strong reviews, positive word of mouth and the fact that the next kid-flick coming to the big screen is the 3D ‘Finding Nemo’ re-release on September 14th, ‘ParaNorman’ might have legs and a strong life on home video.
‘The Campaign‘ somehow fared well in its second weekend, reeling in another $13.3 million. Perhaps Americans want a break from the current hard-core political campaign by watching an exceptionally absurd version of the same.
Rounding out the Top 5 was the Whitney Houston musical drama ‘Sparkle‘. Made on a tiny $14 million budget, the film’s $12 million opening weekend was quite impressive. As perfect counter-programming to ‘The Expendables 2’, ‘Sparkle’ brought out the older female audiences.
In the #7 spot was Disney’s sentimental family film ‘The Odd Life of Timothy Green‘ with $10.9 million. Disney execs have already stated that they’re hopeful that the $25 million movie’s positive CinemaScore rating will boost its theatrical longevity.
Rebecca Hall’s indie paranormal thriller ‘The Awakening‘ opened on 70 screens, yet only pulled in a measly $94,400. Its sour $1,349 per-screen average was even lower than the three-week-old failure ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days‘.
On the opposite end of the spectrum was David Cronenberg’s ‘Cosmopolis‘. On just three screens, the Robert Pattinson vehicle brought in $72,300, for a $24,100 per-screen average. That’s drastically better than anything else that opened this weekend. ‘Robot & Frank‘ also opened strong with $38,200 on just two screens.
Top 10:
1. ‘The Expendables 2’ (Lionsgate) – $28,750,000
2. ‘The Bourne Legacy’ (Universal) – $17,020,000
3. ‘ParaNorman’ (Focus) – $14,008,000
4. ‘The Campaign’ (Warner Bros) – $13,385,000
5. ‘Sparkle’ (TriStar) – $12,000,000
6. ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (Warner Bros) – $11,140,000
7. ‘The Odd Life of Timothy Green’ (Buena Vista) – $10,909,000
8. ‘Hope Springs’ (Sony) – $9,100,000
9. ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days’ (Fox) – $3,850,000
10. ‘Total Recall’ (Sony) – $3,500,000
William Henley
Ouch, a Disney movie opening that low? Doesn’t sound good.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Total Recall are doing pretty bad. Have they even made back what it cost to make them yet? I got a feeling that Diary probably has a pretty modest budget, but I can see Total Recall being a boxoffice bomb.
JM
Hollywood is remaking all of Paul Verhoeven’s films in a subversive fashion as a meta-satire of the state of modern Hollywood.
Jon D
Oh I wish I could believe Hollywood was that clever…….