Weekend Box Office: From Chimpan-A to Steve Harvey

Although ‘The Hunger Games’ finally got muscled out of the #1 spot on, this, its fifth weekend of release, the film managed to only drop another 31%. Coming in at third, ‘The Hunger Games’ has now made $356 million domestically.

The movie that captured the #1 spot not only surprised me, but it surpassed its opening weekend expectations by almost $8 million. Screen Gems’ $12 million comedy ‘Think Like a Man‘ earned a strong $33 million, to become the studio’s second-best opening ever next to ‘The Vow’. Based around a romantic self-help book by Steve Harvey, the movie’s audiences were 63% female and 62% above age 30. Box Office Mojo notes that ‘Think Like a Man’ has also outgrossed Screen Gems’ previous best opening for a film aimed at black audience: ‘Obsessed‘ (which debuted with $28.6 million).

Based on the Nicholas Sparks book, the Zac Efron vehicle ‘The Lucky One‘ also helped to dethrone ‘The Hunger Games’ with its $22.8 million opening. Despite a number of indistinguishable sappy romance flicks from the author, this is the second-best opening for a Sparks-based picture. As expected, 76% of audiences were female and, presumably because of the movie’s star, 52% were under 25 years old.

DisneyNature’s ‘Chimpanzee‘ opened triumphantly with $10.2 million to become the best opener of the studio’s four theatrical releases so far. This marks the best opening for a nature documentary and the third-best for any documentary (the other two being ‘Never Say Never‘ and ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’).

Although ‘The Cabin in the Woods‘ dropped from third to sixth place, it only dropped 47% in attendance. That would make me a happy fan, but the sad fact that ‘The Three Stooges‘ only fell 46% breaks my hope for humanity.

Titanic 3D‘ is still going strong, but I personally wish it would sink. The studio likes the money it’s making so much that all IMAX press screenings of ‘The Avengers’ scheduled for this week were canceled or switched to standard 3D screens because Paramount wasn’t willing to give up the IMAX slots. Friggin ‘Titanic’, now I have to see ‘The Avengers’ on a standard screen.

On 42 screens, ‘Marley‘, the biographical documentary about Bob Marley, opened with $260,000. Its $6,139 per-screen average was only out-done by ‘Darling Companion‘, which earned $46,300 on four screens, giving it $11,575 per screen. Comedy ‘Jesus Henry Christ‘ pulled in $9,300 on just three screens.

Top 10:

1. ‘Think Like A Man’ (Screen Gems) – $33,000,000

2. ‘The Lucky One’ (Warner Bros.) – $22,805,000

3. ‘The Hunger Games’ (Lionsgate) – $14,500,000

4. ‘Chimpanzee’ (Buena Vista) – $10,205,000

5. ‘The Three Stooges’ (Fox) – $9,200,000

6. ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ (Lionsgate) – $7,750,000

7. ‘American Reunion’ (Universal) – $5,200,000

8. ‘Titanic 3D’ (Paramount) – $5,000,000

9. ’21 Jump Street’ (Sony) – $4,600,000

10. ‘Mirror Mirror’ (Relativity) – $4,114,000

2 comments

  1. JM

    The Top 25 highest-grossing films of 2012 seem to be evidence of a civilization in decline.

    $572M – The Hunger Games
    $322M – The Intouchables
    $321M – Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
    $290M – The Lorax
    $278M – Titanic 3D
    $278M – Wrath Of The Titans
    $269M – John Carter
    $199M – Safe House
    $181M – The Vow
    $166M – 21 Jump Street
    $160M – Underworld Awakening
    $145M – The Secret World Of Arrietty
    $145M – This Means War
    $130M – Ghost Rider
    $129M – Battleship
    $123M – The Woman In Black
    $123M – Chronicle
    $119M – Mirror Mirror
    $104M – Let The Bullets Fly
    $104M – American Reunion
    $102M – The Phantom Menace 3D
    $100M – The Devil Inside
    $94M – Contraband
    $78M – Project X
    $77M – Act Of Valor

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