Weekend Box Office: America the Bountiful

This weekend, Marvel’s performance enhancer-using superhero set a new April record.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier‘ not only grossed a huge $96.2 million, dethroning the $86.2 million record set by ‘Fast Five‘ for the all-time highest April opening, but also boosted the character’s standalone franchise by debuting more than $30 million above ‘Captain America: The First Avenger‘. Domestically, ‘First Avenger’ capped out (pun intended) at $176.6 million, which ‘Winter Soldier’ is on track to pass in a very short time. 40% of the sequel’s opening came from 3D showings and $9.6 million came from IMAX. The film also continued to pull in great numbers overseas ($207 from international markets), where it has been open for a week. The next superhero movie to open will be May’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’, so ‘The Winter Soldier’ has plenty of time to make Disney boat-loads of cash.

In its second week, Darren Aronofsky’s Biblical tale ‘Noah‘ slipped 61% in attendance, which isn’t quite as bad as it sounds because the film opened well above studio predictions last weekend. The domestic ten-day total for this $125 million epic is $72.3 million. Overseas, it has earned $106.2 million.

Divergent‘ slipped 49% in its third weekend, adding another $13 million and bringing its 17-day total up to $114 million. Faith-based ‘God’s Not Dead‘, which came out of left field two weekend ago, added 580 screens (bringing it up to 1,758) and only dropped 12% in attendance. The 17-day total for this tiny Christian film is now up to $32.5 million.

Rounding out the Top 5 was Wes Anderson’s ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel‘, which is now showing on 1,263 screens. Its $6.3 million fifth weekend pushes its domestic run up to $33.3 million.

The IMAX-exclusive, Morgan Freeman-narrated nature documentary ‘Island of Lemurs: Madagascar‘ debuted to $185,000 from 37 locations that weren’t showing ‘Captain America’ in the grand screen format.

Scarlett Johansson’s second release of the weekend, ‘Under the Skin‘, made $140,000 from just four screens. The indie sci-fi flick had a very healthy $35,000 per-screen average. So far, neither expansion nor VOD release strategies have been announced.

Fox Searchlight’s ‘Dom Hemingway‘ didn’t fare so well. From four locations, the crime drama only pulled in $32,000, giving it a per-screen average of $8,000. Debuting even worse was the second chapter to Lars von Trier’s sex opus. From 30 locations, ‘Nymphomaniac: Volume II‘ only earned $75,000, equating to a lousy per-screen average of just $2,500. That’s considerably lower than ‘Volume I’, which opened on 25 screens last month and earned $158,369 in its first three days. VOD numbers for ‘Volume II’ have not been released.

Top 10:

1. ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ (Buena Vista) – $96,200,000

2. ‘Noah’ (Paramount) – $17,000,000

3. ‘Divergent’ (Summit) – $13,000,000

4. ‘God’s Not Dead’ (Freestyle) – $7,726,000

5. ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ (Fox Searchlight) – $6,300,000

6. ‘Muppets Most Wanted’ (Buena Vista) – $6,285,000

7. ‘Mr. Peabody & Sherman’ (Fox) – $5,300,000

8. ‘Sabotage’ (Open Road) – $1,908,000

9. ‘Need for Speed’ (Buena Vista) – $1,836,000

10. ‘Non-Stop’ (Universal) – $1,827,000

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