Weekend Box Office Report: April 12-14 2013

By Kip Mooney • On • In News News 0

BOX OFFICE REPORT "” April 12-14, 2013(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

TOP 5

1. 42 ($27.2 million)2. Scary Movie 5 ($15.1 million)3. The Croods ($13.2 million)4. G.I. Joe: Retaliation ($10.8 million)5. Evil Dead ($9.5 million)

 

Baseball season is in full swing (no pun intended).  The Jackie Robinson biopic 42 opened with $27.2 million, crushing the competition and earning the top debut for any baseball movie ever.  The previous record holder was, no joke, the Rob Schneider comedy The Benchwarmers.  This is a pretty massive debut, since it also had the best average of any movie this weekend, which means it played fairly well everywhere it was showing.

In second place was the latest entry from the franchise that simply won't die. Scary Movie 5, which parodies, among other horror flicks, the Paranormal Activity series.  Despite this ground already being covered without laughs in A Haunted House, audiences still turned out for this unnecessary sequel. It didn't make quite as much as Marlon Wayans' version, and it's way off from the $40 million Scary Movie 4 made in its first weekend back in 2006.  Still, it only cost $20 million, so don't be surprised (but still be appalled) if Scary Movie 6 shows up in the next few years.

Everything else was a holdover, but the most distressing news is for Evil Dead, which dropped 63 percent in its second week.  That's not as bad as the 75 percent drop Texas Chainsaw experienced in January, but it again proves horror is powerful, but only for one weekend. 

Outside the top 5:- The anti-tech drama Disconnect, starring Jason Bateman, won the arthouse box office with $8,267 on each of its 15 screens. That's good but not great.- The Place Beyond the Pines, The Company You Keep and Trance all posted huge gains in their expansions. I can only recommend the latter. - Olympus Has Fallen has turned out to be the stealth performer this spring. It's made $81 million so far. $100 million is out of reach, but fairly good for a movie that wasn't marketed nearly as aggressively as its competition. By the way, that's also more than the last Die Hard made.

Next week: Tom Cruise saves our post-apocalyptic world in Oblivion, with virtually no competition.  It's already made $61 million overseas after debuting around the world this past weekend.  Anything less than $40 million would be a huge disappointment, so I'll guess $49 million for the second-biggest opening of the year. 

Facebooktwitterredditmail

About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

Leave a Reply