Weekend Box Office: ‘Game’ Winner

While one movie topped the domestic box office (which we’ll get to shortly) this weekend, the international opening of ‘Thor: The Dark World’ really made some noise. Marvel’s Nordic superhero threw his hammer pretty hard, earning $109.4 million from 36 markets. The character’s sequel is already performing 27% higher than his first solo bout. We’ll see if this trend continues when the movie opens in the U.S. this coming weekend.

In the meantime, ‘Ender’s Game‘ walked away more than $7 million ahead of its closest competition. From 3,407 locations, the sci-fi drama earned $28 million. However, while ‘Ender’ may have won the weekend battle, it definitely won’t win the war. The $110 million movie didn’t open well in the UK last week and it probably won’t hold over well here when ‘Thor’ debuts this weekend.

Surprisingly, ‘Bad Grandpa‘ only dropped 36%. Its second weekend accumulated another $20.5 million. Domestically, the hidden camera comedy has earned $62 million in its first ten days.

The other two wide releases debuted within $300,000 of one another, so it’s very possible that they might flip positions when the weekend actuals are announced today. As of now, ‘Last Vegas‘ holds the #3 spot. From 3,000 locations, the geriatric ‘Hangover’ knock-off earned $16.5 million, which is a good opening for a $28 million comedy with decent hold-over potential.

Animated kids’ movie ‘Free Birds‘ finished in fourth place with $16.2 million. Oddly, this time-traveling turkey movie brought out more adult audiences than kids. Even though the nearest family flick is almost a full month away (Disney’s ‘Frozen’ opens on November 27th), it’s unlikely that ‘Free Birds’ will be too successful.

The #5 spot went to five-week-old ‘Gravity‘. The film’s $13.1 million weekend pushed its domestic total to $219.1 million. Worldwide, ‘Gravity’ has officially become the biggest live-action October release of all time, earning $426.6 million. With drop-offs less than 30-something percent each weekend, the movie is definitely not stopping here. It’ll be fun to see how long this success continues. It’s estimated that that ‘Gravity’ will bow out of theaters around an international total of $600 million.

Fox Searchlight expanded ‘12 Years a Slave‘ up to 410 screens, which bumped it up a spot in the ranks. The powerful slavery drama pulled in $4.6 million, for an $8.7 million cumulative gross. Steve McQueen’s film ought to do even better when it expands wide this coming weekend.

The 175-screen limited domestic release of Richard Curtis’ ‘About Time‘ was a disappointment. The British romantic drama only pulled in $1.1 million. It’s worth noting that the film’s ad campaign has been pretty much absent. Not until this weekend did TV spots begin running in my region. Hopefully, positive word-of-mouth will help when it opens wide this weekend.

As predicted, the limited release of ‘Dallas Buyers Club‘ did quite well, earning the highest per-screen average out of any film this weekend. On just nine screens, the drama brought in $264,000, for $29,333 per screen. The Princess Diana bio-pic, however, did the opposite. On 38 screens, ‘Diana‘ only earned $64,900 and a measly per-screen average of $1,708.

Top 10:

1. ‘Ender’s Game’ (Summit) – $28,000,000

2. ‘Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa’ (Paramount) – $20,500,000

3. ‘Last Vegas’ (CBS) – $16,520,000

4. ‘Free Birds’ (Relativity) – $16,200,000

5. ‘Gravity’ (Warner Bros.) – $13,130,000

6. ‘Captain Phillips’ (Sony) – $8,500,000

7. ’12 Years a Slave’ (Fox Searchlight) – $4,600,000

8. ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2’ (Sony) – $4,200,000

9. ‘Carrie’ (Screen Gems) – $3,400,000

10. ‘The Counselor’ (Fox) – $3,250,000

7 comments

  1. Drew

    Hahaha! That hasn’t stopped many other similar movies from doing big business. Plus, there are just SOOOOO MANY die hard fans of the novel.

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