Weekend Box Office: Kneel Before Zod

Superman returned to the big screen this Father’s Day Weekend, sparking a 51% box office boost from last year and setting a new June record.

After the disappointment of ‘Superman Returns‘, the debut of Zack Snyder’s ‘Man of Steel‘ was in some doubt. However, a strong promotional push and filmmaking ties with ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy writer/director Christopher Nolan helped propel this successful franchise reboot.

Walmart sold tickets to ‘Man of Steel’ showings on Thursday night, but for some reason, the $12 million earned that way haven’t been tallied with the three-day weekend totals. That makes no sense to me, because theaters host plenty of Thursday “private event” showings for big movies, and those totals are always factored into weekend box office numbers. If you count the Walmart showings, ‘Man of Steel’ opened to $125 million – which is pretty impressive because early predictions worried that it wouldn’t even crack $100 million. Even if you don’t include Walmart’s earnings, the film still beat the previous June record-holder, the $110.3 million debut of ‘Toy Story 3‘.

Supes is also having great success overseas. ‘Man of Steel’ earned $71.6 million from 24 international markets, bringing its worldwide debut to $196.7 million. 12% of the domestic earnings came for IMAX showings and 41% from 3D.

Sony is definitely pleased with the opening of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s apocalyptic comedy ‘This Is the End‘. The side-splitting $32 million flick earned $20.5 million over the weekend and another $12.3 million from Wednesday and Thursday showings. The five-day totals have already helped the studio break even on the film’s budget. Now it just has to earn back everything spent on marketing, which shouldn’t take too long.

After 17 days in theaters, ‘Now You See Me‘ continues to hold strong. With another $10.3 million, the caper flick (budgeted at $75) has now earned $80 million. Meanwhile, the four-week-old ‘Fast & Furious 6‘ is also still performing well, adding $9.4 million to its domestic $219.5 million. Worldwide, the sequel has outgrossed the worldwide totals of ‘Fast Five‘ ($628 million, the new franchise record being $636.9 million).

Rounding out the Top 5 was last week’s top movie, ‘The Purge‘. Despite a terrible 76% drop-off, the $3 million movie is already a huge success with ten-day grosses of $51.8 million.

The five-screen opening for ‘The Bling Ring‘ marks the best debut of a Sofia Coppola film since ‘Lost in Translation‘. From those five locations, the indie flick earned $210,000 and warranted a per-screen average of $42,000. Reportedly, all five screens were completely sold out for the weekend.

Top 10:

1. ‘Man of Steel’ (Warner Bros.) – $113,080,000 without Walmart inclusions, $125,080,000 with

2. ‘This Is the End’ (Sony) – $20,500,000

3. ‘Now You See Me’ (Summit) – $10,320,000

4. ‘Fast & Furious 6’ (Universal) – $9,433,000

5. ‘The Purge’ (Universal) – $8,201,000

6. ‘The Internship’ (Fox) – $7,000,000

7. ‘Epic’ (Fox) – $6,000,000

8. ‘Star Trek into Darkness’ (Paramount) – $5,660,000

9. ‘After Earth’ (Sony) – $3,750,000

10. ‘Iron Man 3’ (Buena Vista) – $2,908,000

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