Winner!
Yesterday we had a weekend box office mess, with estimates showing “End of Watch,” “House at the End of the Street,” and “Trouble with the Curve” all tied for first place. I thought the usually reliable horror genre would eventually triumph, with “House” squeaking out a win, but this morning we have word that “End of Watch” has emerged as the weekend’s winner. Here are the revised numbers (courtesy of Deadline):
1. End Of Watch (Open Road) NEW [2,730 Runs] R
Friday $4.6M, Saturday $5.1M, Weekend $13.2M
2? Trouble With The Curve (Warner Bros) NEW [3,212 Runs] PG13
Friday $4.1M, Saturday $5.2M, Weekend $12.9M
2? House At The End Of The Street (Relativity) NEW [3,083 Runs] PG13
Friday $4.6M, Saturday $5.3M, Weekend $12.8M
It’s not much of a win–I mean, if you and I had gone to see “Trouble with the Curve” or “House at the End of the Street,” the victory might have tilted in the direction of one of those movies. And it’s not like the final numbers for any of these movies are anything to get excited about; it was, as Deadline quoted one studio executive, “a race to mediocrity.”
But “End of Watch deserves some extra credit–it played in fewer theaters than the others, and the cop drama isn’t as reliable a ticket seller as horror movies or Clint Eastwood movies. It got an A- Cinemascore, though, so it seems like it might have been a word of mouth success. I don’t know if it has any staying power, but it was a good start.
