Weekend Box Office: Super Bowl Steals Everybody’s Thunder

As expected, the big game kept many moviegoers at home and out of theaters over the weekend. Estimates projected the rough patch, but even the studios didn’t foresee the blow being as heavy as it was.

For the third week in a row, ‘American Sniper‘ remained in the top spot. Despite suffering its steepest decline yet (50%), the film broke yet another record. Its $31.8 million is the highest amount any movie has pulled in on a Super Bowl weekend. To date, ‘American Sniper’ has earned $248.9 million domestically and $67.3 million overseas, which is over $100 million more than director Clint Eastwood’s previous highest-grossing movie (‘Gran Torino’).

Three-week-old ‘Paddington‘ currently sits in the #2 spot with $8.5 million, but that could easily change when the weekend actuals are released. The estimates only show it separated from the #3 movie, ‘Project Almanac‘, by $5,000. The $12 million Found Footage ‘Almanac’ was expected to debut with $16 million, but only opened to $8 million.

Kevin Costner’s race relations drama ‘Black or White‘ opened in fourth place with $6.4 million. This isn’t a good start when you take into account that Costner personally financed more of the movie’s production budget than it drew this weekend, and that critical response has been highly negative.

Fifth place went to last week’s Jennifer Lopez thriller ‘The Boy Next Door‘. Dropping 59% in attendance, the scandalous flick grossed another $6 million, bringing this micro-budget movie’s ten-day total to $24.6 million.

The Loft‘ rounded out the Top 10 with a terrible $2.8 million debut. Having opened on 1,841 screens, the $1,564 per-screen average is a hard hit for Open Road Films.

The IMAX release of the last two episodes of the fourth season of ‘Game of Thrones‘ did very well at 205 locations. The HBO series nabbed $1.5 million, for a per-screen average of $7,322. It’s safe to assume that IMAX will partner with more TV series for special events like this.

Weekend numbers have yet to be released for Jason Statham’s action flick ‘Wild Card’.

Top 10:

1. ‘American Sniper’ (Warner Bros.) – $31,850,000

2. ‘Paddington’ (Weinstein/Dimension) – $8,505,000

3. ‘Project Almanac’ (Paramount) – $8,500,000

4. ‘Black or White’ (Relativity) – $6,456,000

5. ‘The Boy Next Door’ (Universal) – $6,093,000

6. ‘The Wedding Ringer’ (Screen Gems) – $5,700,000

7. ‘The Imitation Game’ (Weinstein) – $5,173,000

8. ‘Taken 3’ (Fox) – $3,650,000

9. ‘Strange Magic’ (Buena Vista) – $3,441,000

10. ‘The Loft’ (Open Road) – $2,879,000

14 comments

  1. Chris B

    Saw Blade Runner in a theatre yesterday afternoon, Jordan Cronenweth’s genius becomes all the more apparent when it’s projected onto such a large screen…what a movie.

  2. EM

    I actually went to theaters four times this weekend—not cineplexes but arthouse venues. I saw Gaslight (the classic Ingrid Bergman–Charles Boyer thriller), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, a program of the current animated-short Oscar contenders, and—in an inspired bit of Super Bowl counterprogramming—The Handmaid’s Tale.

    My Blade Runner trifecta (original theatrical, director’s, and final) is next weekend.

  3. EM

    It’s on Saturday afternoon/evening at 3, 6:30, and 9:30. (There’s another showing of the final cut the evening before.) This is all happening in beautiful Bloomington, Indiana. Be there or be a replicant.

    • Chris B

      Wow that woud be killer. I know I initially stated that I thought showing all 3 cuts was excessive, but after seeing it on Sunday afternoon I’d jump at the chance to repeat it. Especially 3 times in a row with 3 different versions. Do me a favor? Post about the experience under Luke’s Weekend Movies post on monday and tell us about it.

  4. Deaditelord

    Man I’m super jealous. I was a little kid when Blade Runner was released so I’ve never seen the movie on the big screen. I’m sure it would be an amazing experience to see it that way, but sadly it’s a bit too far of a drive from Florida to Bloomington. 🙁

    Have fun!

    • Blade Runner had theatrical re-releases in 1992 and 2007 when the Director’s Cut and the Final Cut were created. I saw both of those in theaters. Did you miss out on those?

    • William Henley

      There are several theater chains that do a Classic Movie Night – usually in the summers on like a Tuesday or Wednesday night. Blade Runner usually gets shown every few years. In the past few years, I got to see Ghostbusters, Gone With The Wind, Top Gun, and Poltergeist,

      • Deaditelord

        I did miss out on them unfortunately Josh. My first exposure to Blade Runner was when I rented the laserdisc of the unrated original cut in 1993. As for the 2007 release of The Final Cut, while I don’t recall the exact reason I missed out, my guess is that it either wasn’t playing anywhere close (at the time I was living in a small town in northern Iowa and ofter ran into this issue with re-releases and smaller films) or the times didn’t fit with my job schedule.

        William, I’m hoping that my moving back to a bigger city means that I’ll be able to do just that. 🙂

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