Memorial Day weekend began a day early this year with both the ‘Kung Fu Panda’ and ‘Hangover’ sequels opening on Thursday. While the premature release scored huge numbers for one, the other didn’t perform so well.
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‘The Hangover Part II<\/strong>‘ brought in a solid $86 million over the standard weekend, only $5 million behind the highest R-rated opening ever, 2003’s ‘The Matrix Reloaded’. Combining its weekend tally with the huge numbers it brought in on Thursday, ‘Part II’ has already grossed $117.6 million. Monday’s Memorial Day winnings ought to bring it a whole lot higher.<\/p>\n Even though ‘Part II’ scored big at the box office, the repetitive story, unoriginal jokes and surprising low 36% Rotten Tomatoes rating<\/a> (compared to a 79% rating<\/a> for the original ‘Hangover’) may hurt its long-term performance. But with numbers this big, rumors are already flying<\/a> about the studio pushing for a third installment possibly set in Amsterdam. <\/p>\n Surprising, ‘Kung Fu Panda 2<\/strong>‘ only opened with $47.8 million, almost $13 million behind the opening of 2008’s ‘Kung Fu Panda<\/a>‘. Taking into account that it had the additional benefit of 3D ticket prices, ‘Panda 2’ was down more than two thirds in attendance from the original. Hopefully ‘Panda 2’ will benefit from strong word-of-mouth and have a long, successful run like fellow DreamWorks Animation title ‘How to Train Your Dragon<\/a>‘.<\/p>\n In its second weekend, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides<\/strong>‘ dropped over 56% in attendance. While this plummet would normally worry a studio, the rising international success calms the studio seas.<\/p>\n Continuing to hold its own after three consecutive weeks, ‘Bridesmaids<\/strong>‘ is once again down only 20% from last weekend. Do not expect ‘Hangover Part II’ to fall in this slow manner.<\/p>\n Palme d’Or winner ‘The Tree of Life<\/strong>‘ brought in huge numbers despite only opening in a four-screen L.A.\/New York release. Bringing in $373,000 in total, ‘The Tree of Life’ earned an average of $93,250 per screen. To show how big those numbers are, ‘The Hangover Part II’ only opened with a screen average of $23,799. With a platform release that will expand the screen numbers over then next two weeks, expect to see ‘Tree of Life’ follow the mold of fellow Cannes 2011 film ‘Midnight in Paris<\/strong>‘. With its expansion from 6 to 58 screens, ‘Midnight in Paris’ jumped from the 13 spot to #7. Earning early Oscar buzz, it’s more than possible that ‘The Tree of Life’ could do even bigger numbers.<\/p>\n 1. ‘The Hangover Part II’ (Warner Bros.) – $86 million<\/p>\n 2. ‘Kung Fu Panda 2’ (Paramount\/DreamWorks) – $47.8 million<\/p>\n 3. ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Buena Vista) – $39.6 million<\/p>\n 4. ‘Bridesmaids’ (Universal) – $16.6 million<\/p>\n 5. ‘Thor’ (Paramount) – $9.4 million<\/p>\n 6. ‘Fast Five’ (Universal) – $6.4 million<\/p>\n 7. ‘Midnight in Paris’ (Sony Pictures Classics) – $1.9 million<\/p>\n 8. ‘Something Borrowed’ (Warner Bros.) – $1.9 million<\/p>\n 9. ‘Rio’ (Fox) – $1.8 million<\/p>\n 10. ‘Jumping the Broom’ (TriStar) – $1.8 million<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Memorial Day weekend began a day early this year with both the ‘Kung Fu Panda’ and ‘Hangover’ sequels opening on Thursday. While the premature release scored huge numbers for one, the other didn’t perform so well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":15595,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139,743],"tags":[198,178,2521,1448,2284,2941,2278,2942],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15590"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85156,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15590\/revisions\/85156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Top 10:<\/h5>\n