A shout out to our second place film.
Here’s how it looks:
1. Taken 2 (Fox) Week 2 [3,706 Runs] PG13
Friday $7.0M, Saturday $9.8M, Weekend $22.7M (-54%), Cume $86.3M
2. Argo (Warner Bros) NEW [3,232 Runs] R
Friday $5.9M, Saturday $8.9M, Weekend $20.1M
3. Sinister (Summit/Lionsgate) NEW [2,527 Runs] R
Friday $7.4M, Saturday $7.0M, Weekend $18.8M
4. Hotel Transylvania (Sony Animation) Week 3 [3,375 Runs] PG
Friday $4.2M, Saturday $7.3M, Weekend $17.0M, Cume $102.1M
5. Here Comes The Boom (Sony) NEW [3,014 Runs] PG
Friday $3.6M, Saturday $5.2M, Weekend $12.0M
[Numbers courtesy of Deadline]
Audiences continue to want to see Liam Neeson use his special skills to put down bad guys. Producers everywhere are desperately racking their brains to try to figure out which other 50+ leading man can also be turned into a stone cold action movie star.
It was a good opening weekend for “Argo.” The movie’s been winning rave reviews since it first started to appear on the festival circuit, so now it was just a question of waiting to see if audiences would come out to see a really well-reviewed movie. I know, you’d think they would, but that’s not often the case. And an action thriller, set in the ’70s, based on a true story, no superheroes, no popular book as a source, with only one big name (and one that isn’t exactly box office catnip) isn’t the world’s easiest sell. Yet Affleck worked hard to sell it over the past week and the steady drumbeat of good publicity seems to have worked. According to Deadline, the movie started out slow on Friday, drawing an audience that was “very old” (you know, over 30). But those who saw it gave it an A+ Cinemascore and it got a huge bump from Friday to Saturday, helping it to a more than solid finish. Look for this one to hang on for a while as word of mouth spreads.
The other new movies this week had varying degrees of success. “Sinister” started out on a high, with a great Friday, but the C+ Cinemascore hurt it, with audiences losing interest over the weekend. It cost nothing to make, though, so $18 million is good enough for them. “Here Comes the Boom” disappointed; it looks like that “Paul Blart, Mall Cop” magic is gone. “Seven Psychopaths” was popular with critics and audiences at Toronto, but that didn’t translate here, where the distributors were expecting better than $3.5 million and a ninth place finish. I think it’s just a hard sell. People see the title and probably think it’s a horror movie. Those who aren’t interested in horror movies don’t look for any more information on it and those who do look at the cast and description and feel that it’s not what they want. It seems like it’s a good movie with a great cast, but it’s not an easy story to sell in thirty seconds.
Next week! We have two very different movies facing off: “Alex Cross” and “Paranormal Activity 4.” So different, in fact, that there won’t be competition between them. Here are two questions for “Alex Cross”: Will the James Patterson fans turn out? Will Tyler Perry fans turn out for a non-Madea movie? We’ll see…
