Weekend Box Office Report: September 5-7 2014

By Kip Mooney • On • In News News 0

 

BOX OFFICE REPORT September 5-7, 2014(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

TOP 51. Guardians of the Galaxy ($10.1 million)2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ($6.5 million)3. If I Stay ($5.7 million)4. Let's Be Cops ($5.4 million)5. The November Man  ($4.2 million)

Guardians of the Galaxy stayed on top yet again, passing Captain America: The Winter Soldier to become the No. 1 movie of 2014. It's unlikely for a movie to return to the top after time away, and then stay there for three more weeks. But that's the power of this band of outsiders. It about to become the only movie of 2014 to pass $300 million.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is nearer to an undeserved $200 million, but probably won't quite hit that mark. It held fast at No. 2 while If I Stay remained at No. 3, now at $39.6 million. That's even better than Kick-Ass 2, a sequel to a movie that opened at the top spot. Then again Chloe Grace Moretz's top 3 movies are Dark Shadows, Hugo and Big Momma's House 2. 

Last week's cheap horror flick As Above, So Below dropped to sixth, while Let's Be Cops and The November Man topped it. The former is definitely the sleeper comedy of the summer, one no one expected to do quite so well. The November Man is merely doing adequate business. 

Outside the top 5: - This Weekend's Indie Champ: Last Days in Vietnam, about well, you can figure it out. It averaged $15,250 on its pair of screens. 

- Cantinflas, a biopic about the prolific Mexican actor, has now earned $4.7 million. That's only slightly behind this year's Cesar Chavez, despite opening on half the screens and being about a subject who does not have a street named after him in most major American cities. What's most interesting is both films have the same distributor. Wonder what they did better this time. 

- Forrest Gump earned a mere $405,000 in its 20th anniversary re-release. That's far less than last week's Ghostbusters victory lap, but this was on far fewer screens.

Next week: It's time for a new No. 1 and that movie is: Dolphin Tale 2? Yes, the sequel to 2011's surprise hit about a dolphin with a prosthetic tail is destined to repeat at the top spot. I'll say something ridiculous like $20 million. The only other wide release is the Idris Elba thriller No Good Deed, which I only wish was about him hunting Tyler Perry's character from Good Deeds.

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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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