Weekend Box Office: Spies Like Us, And We Like Spies

With glowing reviews and great word-of-mouth, it’s no surprise that Melissa McCarthy’s new comedy came in at the top of the box office this weekend. However, much like Warners’ big-screen revival of an HBO series, it didn’t quite live up to expectations.

After McCarthy’s ‘Tammy‘ failed to entertain last summer, it looked like her schtick had worn out its welcome. Luckily, Paul Feig is too smart to just have her play out the same jokes in a new scenario, so their James Bond spoof ‘Spy‘ had a nice debut. The R-rated action comedy opened to $30 million, which is much better than the $21.5 million ‘Tammy’ opened with, but not as good as Feig and McCarthy’s last collaboration, ‘The Heat‘ ($39.1 million). ‘Spy’ was expected to reach $35 million, but with no new comedies opening for a few weeks and a solid response thus far, the $65 million film ought to hold over well.

Dwayne Johnson’s intense disaster flick ‘San Andreas‘ not only had a great opening last week, it also had a stronger-than-expected holdover this weekend. The $110 million VFX-laden picture dropped 51% in attendance but still added another $26.4 million to its run, which now sits at $92.1 million domestically and $60 million overseas.

Focus Features didn’t put much effort into the marketing for ‘Insidious: Chapter 3‘, but it turns out that the studio didn’t need to. The PG-13 horror flick opened in third place with $23 million. The original ‘Insidious‘ was made with a micro $1.5 million budget, opened to $13.2 million and grossed $97 million worldwide. ‘Chapter 2‘ was made for $5 million, debuted to a whopping $40.2 million and earned $161.9 million worldwide. Since it’s a prequel that doesn’t feature the franchise’s original stars (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) nor director (James Wan left for ‘Furious 7’), the opening of ‘Chapter 3’ is still strong enough – even with a higher budget of $10 million – that we’ll probably see a ‘Chapter 4’ before long.

Although ‘Entourage‘ had a great mid-week debut ahead of its R-rated comedy competition, it didn’t have a great weekend. The big-screen expansion of the HBO series grossed $7.3 million on Wednesday and Thursday, but only $10.4 million on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Expectations placed the three-day weekend around $15 million, but the film missed the mark. With a production budget of $30 million, Warner Bros. certainly hoped for a better outcome. Word-of-mouth from audiences has been good, but terrible reviews from critics (the film currently has a meager 30% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes) may affect its potential holdover.

Rounding out the Top 5 was ‘Mad Max: Fury Road‘, which is still racing ahead at a great pace despite being four weeks deep. The additional $7.9 million earned this weekend pushed the sequel’s domestic run up to $130.8 million. Worldwide, the high-octane action flick has crossed the $300 million mark.

The Brian Wilson bio-pic ‘Love & Mercy‘ had a great 483-screen opening that landed it just outside the Top 10. The drama scored $2.2 million and, due to the turnout and buzz, is expected to expand wider over the next few weeks.

Piggybacking off the success of the similar ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’, Alicia Vikander’s period piece drama ‘Testament of Youth‘ saw strong returns from its limited four-screen opening. The picture earned $53,000 and a per-screen average of $13,250.

Top 10:

1. ‘Spy’ (Fox) – $30,000,000

2. ‘San Andreas’ (Warner Bros.) – $26,440,000

3. ‘Insidious: Chapter 3’ (Focus) – $23,000,000

4. ‘Entourage’ (Warner Bros.) – $10,420,000

5. ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (Warner Bros.) – $7,970,000

6. ‘Pitch Perfect 2’ (Universal) – $7,700,000

7. ‘Tomorrowland’ (Buena Vista) – $7,022,000

8. ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ (Buena Vista) – $6,201,000

9. ‘Aloha’ (Sony) – $3,300,000

10. ‘Poltergeist’ (Fox) – $2,850,000

1 comment

  1. William Henley

    I wasn’t interested in any of the movies this weekend, so we finally caught Poltergeist. Glad I caught that at the cheaper theater and paid $6 versus $10-$15 at the other theaters in the area. The movie is okay, but not great. If you haven’t seen it yet, I would just wait for this movie to either hit the dollar theaters or Redbox.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *