Weekend Box Office: ‘Thief’ Steals a Win

If you’ve been following the friendly game of Box Office Pick ‘Em that Aaron Peck and I started (basically, it’s fantasy sports with box office), you know that I need a solid weekend win. Luckily, this weekend gave me one.

With a reported budget of $35 million, after this debut weekend, everything ‘Identity Thief‘ makes from here on out will go straight into my fantasy bank. Expected to earn $25.5 million, the R-rated comedy actually pulled in $36.6 million. Box Office Mojo points out that this opening is much stronger than director Seth Gordon’s last two hits. As awful as it was, the PG-13 ‘Four Christmases‘ opened to $31.1 million and the R-rated ‘Horrible Bosses‘ debuted to $28.3 million. Both went on to cross the $100 million mark. At this point, it’s possible that ‘Identity Thief’ could cross that line too.

The $11.5 million earned by ‘Warm Bodies‘ in its second weekend was too strong for Steven Soderbergh’s supposedly final outing, ‘Side Effects‘, to overcome. On 2,605 screens, the star-filled thriller only managed to wrangle $10 million and land in the #3 spot. Box Office Mojo believes the failed opening was due to the distributor opting to keep the film’s trailers vague in order to preserve its many twists. Regardless, this is no way that a renowned director wants to go out.

Silver Linings Playbook‘ is still proving to have very long legs. In its thirteenth weekend, the Oscar contender showed just how much steam it can generate. The film earned another $6.9 million, and is now less than $10 million away from crossing the $100 million milestone.

Rounding out the Top 5 was the three-week-old ‘Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters’ with another $5.7 million.

The limited IMAX release of ‘Top Gun 3D‘ proved to be a smart move. On just 300 screens, Maverick and Goose pulled in $1.9 million and finished just one spot away from cracking the Top 10. Too bad for Paramount that ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’ will give ‘Top Gun’ the IMAX boot this Friday. On the upside, the Blu-ray 3D release is just one week away.

Finally, we get to ‘A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III‘. The two-screen opening gave Roman Coppola’s film a $12,000 opening. There hasn’t been any official word on how (or whether) this one will be released to the rest of America.

Top 10

1. ‘Identity Thief’ (Universal) – $36,593,000

2. ‘Warm Bodies’ (Summit) – $11,500,000

3. ‘Side Effects’ (Open Road) – $10,015,000

4. ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ (Weinstein) – $6,908,000

5. ‘Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters’ (Paramount) – $5,750,000

6. ‘Mama’ (Universal) – $4,323,000

7. ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (Sony) – $4,000,000

8. ‘Argo’ (Warner Bros.) – $2,500,000

9. ‘Django Unchained’ (Weinstein) – $2,288,000

10. ‘Bullet to the Head’ (Warner Bros.) – $1,980,000

1 comment

  1. I saw “Hansel and Gretel” this past weekend and I was surprised by how entertaining it was. Solid B-movie fun! And spectacular 3D, too. My eyes never really adapt to the gimmick, but I had no troubles here. Even though it’s post-converted, I was deeply impressed by (for example) the opening credits. Good gags, too.

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