Weekend Box Office Report: March 1-3 2013

By Kip Mooney • On • In News News 0

BOX OFFICE REPORT - March 1-3, 2013(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)TOP 5:1. Jack the Giant Slayer ($28 million)2. Identity Thief ($9.7 million)3. 21 and Over ($9 million)4. The Last Exorcism, Part II ($8 million)5. Snitch ($7.7 million)It's not quite time to crown Nicholas Hoult a star yet. Yes, he's had two No. 1 openings in the past month, but neither Warm Bodies nor his new film Jack the Giant Slayer have exactly lit the world on fire. The CGI battle-filled retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk earned a pitiful $28 million to open in first place. While it certainly slayed its competition, Bryan Singer's family fantasy film cost nearly $200 million, which this won't even begin to cover. No one's going to call this a John Carter-sized flop, but it's not looking good.Identity Thief finished in second once again with $9.7 million. It's now the first movie of 2013 to cross $100 million. It joins such illustrious first-place finishers as The Vow and Just Go with It. Its dominance over the box office this past month would be more impressive if the movies it beat looked any good. Two re-hashes battled their way for third and fourth, with 21 and Over (a rip-off of The Hangover from the writers of The Hangover) made about $1 million more than The Last Exorcism, Part II (a rip-off of the first movie from its star). Neither movie had a huge opening, but both were cheap gambles for their studios. 21 and Over only cost $13 million, and should recoup that by the end of next weekend. The Last Exorcism, Part II, has already exceeded its $5 million budget. 21 and Over, despite looking like it might actually provide some laughs, made less than half of the similarly themed Project X from last year, and that was easily one of the worst movies I've ever seen.Outside the top 5:- Stoker killed (pun intended) the art-house competition. Nicole Kidman's creepy thriller from the director of Oldboy averaged $22,686 on seven screens.- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey finally surpassed $1 billion worldwide. As noted before, that's much longer than it took Skyfall. It's now 15th all-time worldwide. - Two movies are now in the No Way It Makes $100 Million Club: Zero Dark Thirty ($93.6 million in its 11th week) and A Good Day to Die Hard ($59.6 million in its third week). It's a very respectable gross for the former and a huge disappointment for the latter. Next week:

Everyone make way for Oz the Great and Powerful. The CGI blast is likely to do Alice in Wonderland business, which is fitting, considering it looks like the exact same movie. Look for about $75 million over the three days plus midnight showings. Anything else will be disappointing. Its only other competition is the Colin Farrell-Noomi Rapace revenge thriller Dead Man Down. That should only make $10 million tops.

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