Weekend Box Office Report: October 3-5 2014

By Kip Mooney • On • In News News 0

BOX OFFICE REPORT 

October 3-5, 2014(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

TOP 51. Gone Girl ($38.0 million)2. Annabelle ($37.2 million)3. The Equalizer ($19.0 million)4. The Maze Runner ($12.4 million)5. The Boxtrolls  ($12.0 million)

It was a photo finish between terrifically crafted entertainment for adults and rushed-through entertainment for teens. David Fincher's adaptation of Gillian Flynn's best-seller Gone Girl narrowly made the top spot. Its $38 million opening is simply fantastic and enthusiastic word-of-mouth despite its violent subject matter means it will continue to do well as it builds on its buzz of being the first major Oscar front-runner.

Just behind it in second place was Annabelle, a sort-of prequel to last year's The Conjuring, which was the rare horror flick to have both critical and commercial success. This quickly produced, tangentially connected companion film only had the latter.

The Equalizer continued to do well in its second week, despite dropping to No. 3. The action thriller has now made $64 million and is a good candidate to be Denzel Washington's fifth $100 million picture. His biggest film remains 2007's American Gangster, which is somehow still underrated.

The Maze Runner and The Boxtrolls swapped spots, barely making more than one another. The former already has its sequel locked up and $90 million in its sights, but the latter still needs to hope for Oscar attention to even get to its $60 million budget.

Outside the top 5: - This Weekend's Indie Champ: Time is Illmatic, a documentary about rapper Nas, averaged $11,600 on both its screens.

- Left Behind, the latest attempt to bring the best-selling apocalyptic thriller to the big screen, flopped yet again. Even with Nicolas Cage taking the lead, the faith-based film still only made $6.8 million. That's better than the original film with Kirk Cameron, but hardly the beginning of a franchise with 13 books in it.

- It has not been a good year for director Jason Reitman. The two-time Oscar nominee had Labor Day flop in January. His latest film, Men, Women & Children, is floundering in limited release. It's only made $61,000 since opening Wednesday. That would be great if it was only on three screens, but it's on 17. Its expansion throughout October may get curtailed if it doesn't start attracting audiences.

Next week: There are just way too many movies opening next weekend. There's Robert Downey Jr's familial drama The Judge, Disney's adaptation of the kids' book Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day, and a new Dracula movie that for some reason is called Dracula Untold instead of Dracula: The Untold Story. I get the feeling that all of these will be second banana to Gone Girl. The latter has the best shot at unseating it, which makes me weep for the future. But I don't think $25 million will be enough to do it.

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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.

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