Weekend Box Office: ‘Neighbors’ Move In

Over the Mother’s Day weekend, Seth Rogen and Zac Efron hot-boxed theaters around the country, while Spider-Man’s webs failed to swing him into a second week’s win.

Estimated to open in the $40 million range, ‘Neighbors‘ locked in the #1 spot with a huge $50 million premiere. With a production budget of just $18 million, the R-rated comedy has already given distributor Universal Studios big revenue at this point, and is Seth Rogen’s biggest opening to date.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2‘ fell nearly 60% over its second weekend, which is about on par with most comic book releases, including Marvel’s last three post-‘Avengers’ flicks. The $37.2 million pushes its domestic ten-day total up to $147.9 million. With ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ hitting theaters in less than two weeks, Spidey doesn’t have much more time to remain atop the comic book box office chart. It’s predicted that ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ will bow around $215 million, which is nearly $50 million behind the first ‘Amazing’ installment. However, where it’s falling behind in domestic numbers, the film is far exceeding international expectations. The sequel has already earned $403 million overseas, which is less than $90 million away from where the first movie finished.

Although 53% of the attendees for ‘Neighbors’ were female, that didn’t seem to make much of a difference for third-place ‘The Other Woman‘. In its third weekend, the chick flick lured in another $9.2 million, bringing its 17-day total up to $61.7 million.

Fourth place went to ‘Heaven Is for Real‘, which slipped just 18% in its fourth weekend. The additional $7 million brought its cumulative total up to $75.2 million. In fifth place is comic book blockbuster ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier‘. The $5.6 million sixth weekend brought its domestic run up to $244.9 million. Overseas, ‘Cap’ has $450.6 million tucked under his hat.

Tiny, unmarketed ‘Moms’ Night Out‘ opened in the #7 spot with $4.2 million. That number isn’t huge, but when you take into account that it was showing on just north of 1,000 screens, it’s not half bad. Unbeknownst to me, ‘Moms’ Night Out’ is a faith-based movie. When compared to the other three recent releases that saw wild success at the box office (‘Son of God’, ‘God’s Not Dead’ and ‘Heaven Is for Real’), ‘Moms’ Night Out’ doesn’t hold a candle.

The major bomb of the week was the painful-looking family flick ‘Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return‘. From more than 2,500 locations, the animated 3D picture only accumulated $3.7 million. After this botched outing, it’s unlikely that the folks behind it will return Dorothy to Oz again anytime soon.

Jon Favreau’s food- and friend-filled indie flick ‘Chef‘ had a very strong opening on just six screens. It earned $204,000, giving it a very strong $34,000 per-screen average. Open Road Films is planning to give the film a platform release over the next several weeks.

James Franco’s ‘Palo Alto‘ also did pretty well in limited release with $80,600 from just four screens, giving it a $20,150 per-screen average. There’s been no word on Tribeca Films’ expansion plans.

Top 10:

1. ‘Neighbors’ (Universal) – $51,070,000

2. ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ (Sony) – $37,200,000

3. ‘The Other Woman’ (Fox) – $9,250,000

4. ‘Heaven Is for Real’ (TriStar) – $7,000,000

5. ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ (Buena Vista) – $5,619,000

6. ‘Rio 2’ (Fox) – $5,125,000

7. ‘Moms’ Night Out’ (TriStar) – $4,200,000

8. ‘Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return’ (Clarius) – $3,705,000

9. ‘Divergent’ (Summit) – $1,700,000

10. ‘Brick Mansions’ (Relativity) – $1,480,000

7 comments

  1. William Henley

    Mom’s Night Out has been marketed like crazy in churches. I hadn’t seen anything anywhere else about it, though.

      • William Henley

        Yeah, we played like a 5 minute fluff piece about it. I was kind of surprised, considering the fluff piece didn’t talk about God once. Not really sure whose idea it was to play that piece. Some churches had posters and stuff hung for it. We didn’t, just played the fluff piece

        • EM

          Well, the movie’s faith-based…which in this case apparently means you have to have faith that it might have something to do with God.

  2. Timcharger

    What! The Church is being run like a business?

    Marketing is involved? There is central planning with sales channels to distribute “fluff pieces”? Say WHAT?!

    Posters, tchotskies, and stuff hung? Guess the merchants inside the temple have much power. Power to crucify at one time, I recall.

    • William Henley

      Yeah. I think the idea this year is that many churches are getting behind all the faith-based movies coming out this year to let Hollywood know that there actually is an audience and a market for these films. However, when said studios then start marketing directly back to the church…..

      Of course, is this really that different from having bookstores and coffee shops in the church?

      Of course, if you go back to the Bible and Jesus overturning the tables, that wasn’t necessarially because stuff was being sold in the church, but people were charging outragious prices for things people needed to worship. A modern day example would probably be like a church charging a couple of hundred dollars for someone to buy their own communion elements.

      So, marketing to a church, its kinda iffy. I mean, would it be any different if someone released a Christian album, or they were advertising a conference or a concert? So I guess it is not that crazy to imagine that we can market movies as well.

      • EM

        Churches should be careful what they ask for. The ultimate in what happens when churches try to influence filmmaking? Plan 9 From Outer Space. Granted, it’s a cool movie, but not for religious reasons.

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