Saturday, May 16, 2015

Weekend Box Office: 'Avengers' is Still Smashing; 'Hot Pursuit' Withers


Mother’s Day weekend saw new offerings from Reese Witherspoon, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jack Black all stumble at the North American box office, albeit to varying degrees.
In its second weekend, Disney and Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Age of Ultron remained a force of nature, topping the chart with $77.1 million from 4,276 screens to jump the $300 million mark domestically and putting its world total at a stunning $875.3 million. The tentpole enjoyed the second-biggest sophomore weekend of all time after the first Avengers ($865.3 million).

Related: 'Mad Max: Fury Road' Costume Design: The Inside Details on Wasteland Couture

Hot Pursuit, starring Witherspoon opposite Sofia Vergara, placed No. 2 with a disappointing $13.3 million from 3004 theaters. The female offering was never expected to unseat Age of Ultron, but hoped to open in the high teens, if not $20 million.
Terrible reviews, and a C+ CinemaScore from audiences, surely hurt the MGM and New Line title, which marks the second-worst nationwide opening for a Witherspoon comedy after How Do You Know ($7.5 million). Females made up 62 percent of the audience, and males, 38 percent.
Anne Fletcher directed Witherspoon and Vergara in Hot Pursuit. MGM and Witherspoon’s company, Pacific Standard, ran production on the $35 million movie, starring Witherspoon as an inept police officer who must protect the widow of a drug dealer from criminals and corrupt cops.

Related:  'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Hits $1 Billion at the Box Office

Witherspoon was last in theaters in Wild, the Fox Searchlight title that earned her an Oscar nomination. In terms of her last comedy, This Means War debuted to $17.4 million in February 2012.
The news was all-out dismal for Jack Black’s dark comedy The D Train, which IFC Films launched in 1,009 theaters, the widest opening in the history of the distributor, which generally relies on platform releases to build word of mouth.
D Train, directed by Jarrad Paul and premiering at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, grossed $469,185, the fifth-worst opening in history for a film opening in 600 to 2,000 theaters, not accounting for inflation. Black stars as the chairman of a high school alumni committee who decides convince the most popular guy in his class (James Marsden) to come back for their 20th reunion, thinking this will make others want to attend.

Making a limited play was Maggie, the Arnold Schwarzenegger-Abigail Breslin zombie thriller. The movie opened to a meek $125,000-plus from 79 theaters.

Elsewhere at the specialty box office, French biopic Saint Laurentopened to $36,136 from four theaters in New York and Los Angeles for a location average of $9,034. Last year, rival project Yves SaintLaurent debuted to $24,207 from two locations for a theater average of $12,104.

No comments:

Post a Comment