Amir here, bringing you this weekend’s box office report. Hit by superhero fatigue (more specifically ‘X-Men fatigue’ or even more specifically ‘Hugh Jackman as Wolverine’ fatigue) and feeling generally uninterested in most of the weekend’s leftover offerings, I spent the past couple of days at home catching up with some classics. The rest of North America felt differently, rushing to see Jackman’s sixth outing as the adamantium-clawed hero to help it to a total gross of 55 million dollars. Box office analysts suggest this number is well below the expectations but considering that with the international gross, The Wolverine has already surpassed its entire production budget in three days, it is well beyond the limits of my understanding how that is not considered a success.
BOX OFFICE
01 THE WOLVERINE $55 *NEW*
02 THE CONJURING $22.1 (cum. $83.8)
03 DESPICABLE ME 2 $16 (cum. $306.4)
04 TURBO $13.3 (cum. $55.7)
05 GROWN UPS 2 $11.5 ($101.6)
06 RED 2 $9.4 (cum. $35)
07 PACIFIC RIM $7.5 (cum. $84)
08 THE HEAT $6.8 (cum. $141.2) Review
09 R.I.P.D. $5.8 (cum. $24.3)
10 FRUITVALE STATION $4.6 (cum. $6.3) Review
11 THE WAY WAY BACK $3.3 (cum. $8.9)
12 WORLD WAR Z $2.7 (cum. $192.6) Review
The weekend’s other wide release is the virginity comedy called The To-Do List. Not helped by the generally negative critical response, Aubrey Plaza and co. sold less than two million dollars worth of tickets and debuted outside the top ten, surely a failure by all measures. On the other hand, The Conjuring continued its strong run and proved once again that horror films are the most consistently profitable genre in today’s cinema. Meanwhile, Fruitvale Station added more than 1000 screens and The Way, Way Back nearly 600, and they were both rewarded with strong returns, allowing them to finish at 10th and 11th respectively.
The real story of the weekend, however, was in the tiny release of Blue Jasmine. Those of us not lucky enough to live in NY and LA will have to wait at least a week to see it, but Woody Allen’s latest opened to an astonishing 102k/screen average on six screens, surpassing the screen average of the widely successful Midnight in Paris. It’s probably a bit much to expect a similar final tally for Jasmine, but the signs are all good so far.
What did you see this weekend? (If you are as uninspired by the top ten as I am, may I suggest the acclaimed documentary The Act of Killing or Computer Chess? See them if they’re open near you!)