By Todd Allen

It wasn’t a huge weekend at the movie box office, but it wasn’t quite the disaster last weekend was, either.  A newcomer and a reissue topped the receipts for the weekend, perhaps a bit lower than expected, particularly for the reissue, but that’s how the tickets tally.  Resident Evil:  Retribution got the number 1 slot with a bit over $21M and Finding Nemo 3D (yes, the original was in 2D) was second with around $17.5M.  Not bad for a second release gimmicked up into a 3D film.

First, the top 11 for the weekend, per Box Office Mojo:

1 Resident Evil: Retribution $21,100,000
2 Finding Nemo (3D) $17,504,000
3 The Possession $5,800,000
4 Lawless $4,219,000
5 ParaNorman $3,039,000
6 The Expendables 2 $3,030,000
7 The Words $2,880,000
8 The Bourne Legacy $2,875,000
9 The Odd Life of Timothy Green $2,511,000
10 The Campaign $2,405,000
11 The Dark Knight Rises $2,140,000

A quiet weekend will all the revenue drops below 40%, which could mean good word of mouth or it could just mean nothing in the theater right now sufficiently motivated the audience to rush out and see it the first week (I’m leaning towards the second option).

We have yet another SF/F film taking the top spot, echoing the Geek Chic Summer, though the latest Resident Evil doesn’t do it in spectacular fashion.

The Dark Knight Rises falls out of the top 10, but if you look at its per screen average of $1,354, that’s the 5th highest per screen average of anything over 1,000 screens.  Batman still has legs, but he’s still losing screens, much like the Avengers.

Speaking of the Avengers, that film lost more than 60% of its screens, but still pulled in a over half a million this weekend.  20 weeks in the theaters is a pretty long run.

As things have been relatively quiet in the last couple months, we see a couple big budget films that haven’t even match their production costs with the gross box office receipts:

  • Expendables 2: ~$80.3M box office vs. $100M budget
  • Bourne Legacy: ~$107.8M box office vs. $125M budget

Bourne is just under $199M global and Expendable 2 ~$238.7M, so nobody’s losing money yet… at least once home video and cable are figured it, but that’s below domestic expectations.  Amazing Spider-Man, while exceeding the budget domestically, was in a similar boat.  The global box office is more important to the break even point this Fall.

Next week we’ll see if things pick up a little bit.  I’m not sure how anticipated these films are, but there are two releases with ridiculously good initial reviews at Rotten Tomatoes  Dredd (as in Judge Dredd) will open in 2,400 theaters and has a 90% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.  End of Watch, an LA cops vs. Mexican cartel action flick with Jake Gyllenhall has a 92% rating and opens somewhere in the 2,600 to 2,900 range.  We’ll see if those percentages hold up for the final tally, but that’s a very positive initial sign for both.  The big screen count release is the Clint Eastwood/Amy Adams baseball vehicle, Trouble With the Curve, which opens with 3,100+ screens.  There’s also 2,600 screens of House at the End of the Street, a thriller where we get to see what kind of draw Jennifer Lawrence has post-Hunger Games.

That’s 4 wide releases in different genres, each with something going for it.  Dredd’s got the least screens, so it would take a real surge for it to win the week, but we’ll see what happens as the SF/F slate starts to open up again.

 

4 COMMENTS

  1. (24) 14 Raiders of the Lost Ark (IMAX) Par. $400,000 -76.1% 322 +55 $1,242 $2,835,000

    No 3-D. Just a restored edition to promote a blu-ray release.

    If it becomes part of the IMAX repertoire, then it could circulate for years. (But few commercial IMAX movies do… no midnight movie market for IMAX?)

    Dark Knight Rises is currently #9 worldwide, and just needs $9 Million to reach #7 and $62M to reach #63.

    “The Master” (87 RT), earning $146,000 PER SCREEN (a record), goes into wider release next week.

  2. I saw Resident Evil: Retribution and it wasn’t my cup of tea, but that’s just me. Obviously enough people liked it and that’s all that matters.

    Some folks complain about films like these, but the sequels get made and the math never lies.

  3. I totally did not know that Milla had a new RE jam. That franchise has been strangely important in my life, even though I have not played one minute of the game.

    Five minutes ago, I had no plans for Friday.

    Now I do.

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