Weekend Box Office: Navy SEALs Take Down Tyler Perry

The televised broadcast of the Academy Awards ceremony usually takes a small bite out of box office earnings, but that wasn’t the case with this weekend’s top flick.

Endorsed by both the government and special ops aficionado Tom Clancy, after a firestorm of advertisements and promos, Relativity’s ‘Act of Valor‘ grossed more than $4 million above expectations to come in with $24.7 million. With a humble budget of only $12 million, you would assume that it wouldn’t take long for the movie to turn a profit. The question now is how well ‘Act of Valor’ will play overseas.

Earning $16 million, ‘Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds‘ marks the second-lowest opening for a Tyler Perry movie. However, with such a loyal fan base for the director, Lionsgate expects the film to have legs. Considering the low budgets that Perry typically functions on, I’m sure this mild opening will not affect his credibility.

The other two nationwide openers also opened lower than expectations. ‘Wanderlust‘ earned $6.6 million, which is drastically lower than the $10.2 it was expected to earn. ‘Gone‘ earned $5 million instead of the predicted $6.1. The two releases landed in eighth and ninth place, respectively.

‘Journey 2’ crossed the $75 million mark this weekend and moved back up to the #3 spot. R-rated ‘Safe House’ also stayed fairly strong will pass $100 million within the next few days. ‘The Vow’ fell to the #5 spot, but has now accrued over $100 million in just three days. Not bad for a romantic drama. Both ‘This Means War’ and ‘Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance’ continue to fizzle. Rounding out the Top 10 is Studio Ghibli’s ‘The Secret World of Arrietty’.

Oscar contenders ‘The Artist’, ‘A Separation’ and ‘My Week with Marilyn’ saw bumps in attendance. ‘Hugo’ and ‘The Descendants’ didn’t do half bad either.

Top 10:

1. ‘Act of Valor’ (Relativity) – $24,700,000

2. ‘Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds’ (Lionsgate) – $16,000,000

3. ‘Journey 2: The Mysterious Island’ (Warner Bros.) – $13,475,000

4. ‘Safe House’ (Universal) – $11,400,000

5. ‘The Vow’ (Screen Gems) – $10,000,000

6. ‘Ghost Rider: Spirit of Revenge’ (Sony) – $8,800,000

7. ‘This Means War’ (Fox) – $8,500,000

8. ‘Wanderlust’ (Universal) – $6,600,000

9. ‘Gone’ (Summit) – $5,000,000

10. ‘The Secret World of Arrietty’ (Buena Vista) – $4,503,000

3 comments

  1. Just wondering – Ghost Rider seems to have been getting poor numbers since it opened. Has it even broke even yet? I mean, it only got a 14 on Rotten Tomatoes, I don’t see a huge surge of people suddenly deciding to go see it.

    • According to Box Office Mojo, Ghost Rider has grossed about $48.6 million worldwide so far:

      http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=ghostrider2.htm

      Its budget was $57 million, and a movie needs to gross about 2.5 times its production budget to break even after distribution and promotion.

      The movie is basically dead in the water in the U.S. Unless it has a huge surge overseas (it doesn’t open in some markets until March), I doubt it will break even theatrically. It may eventually turn a small profit by the time video rolls around, however.

  2. JM

    ‘The Artist’ has made $76M worldwide, off a $15M budget.

    ‘Chipwrecked’ has made $330M, off a $75M budget.

    ‘Ghost Protocol’ has made $679M, off a $145M budget.

    I wonder what Hazanavicius will do next? I wouldn’t mind another OSS 117.

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