Screen Gems continues to find success with their Resident Evil franchise with a recipe that seems to require a budget around $60 million, 3D, Paul W.S. Anderson directing, Milla Jovovich starring and big foreign expectations. While they spent a reported $65 million on Resident Evil: Retribution, the $21.1 million it brought in at the box-office this weekend should help it achieve somewhere around $50 million domestically while it tallies north of $200 million internationally.
While Retribution opened almost $5 million down from Resident Evil: Afterlife, it was in about 200 fewer theaters so I don’t think Screen Gems will be too concerned though the drop in dollars and a drop in CinemaScore (from B- with Afterlife to C+ for Retribution) may show franchise fatigue. Considering this one was bringing back franchise characters I am a bit surprised it wasn’t able to land a better result.
You know who’s not surprised, reader “Rach” who predicted it would come in at $21 million, barely edging out chriscarmichael. Nice work!
However, the RopeofSilicon Box-Office Oracle, Laremy Legel, has gone from a streak of 12 weeks in a row predicting the #1 film correctly to a two week streak of getting it wrong. This week Laremy decided to gamble and went with the 3D re-release of Finding Nemo, but his $29.4 million prediction came up $12 million short as the Pixar animated classic fell well short of The Lion King in 3D‘s $30.2 million opening and even Beauty and the Beast‘s $17.8 million opening. Of course, while these numbers are sliding a bit, this is all gravy as they take home a little extra dough and prepare to bank on the upcoming Blu-ray release.
One film that looked like it might be able to squeak into the top ten was the out-of-nowhere faith-based feature Last Ounce of Courage, which receive the “Official Seal of Approval” from Chuck Norris. Well, after bringing in $690,000 from 1,407 theaters on Friday it could only manage $1.7 million for the weekend and a fifteenth place finish.
In limited release, The Weinstein Co. has got to be all smiles as Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master opened in five theaters and brought in $729,745 for a record $145,949 per theater. The record was set earlier this year by Wes Anderson‘s Moonrise Kingdom, which might suggest there is some business to be found in the art house section given the right last name… preferably Anderson.
The Richard Gere starrer Arbitrage also did extremely well, bringing in $2 million from 197 theaters for a $10,508 per theater average the same weekend it hit On Demand. I haven’t yet seen it, but have heard good things and heard Gere’s name mentioned as a potential Best Actor contender.
I have included the weekend top ten directly below as we must also now look forward to next weekend with four new wide releases in Dredd 3D, stealing screens from Resident Evil, which amassed 66% of its total from 3D and IMAX screens, End of Watch, the Jennifer Lawrence thriller House at the End of the Street and Clint Eastwood returns to the screen with Trouble with the Curve. And hopefully many of you will be able to find The Perks of Being a Wallflower in limited release, it’s great.
