Fast & Furious 6 is now the only film in the successful franchise to repeat at #1 two weekends in a row, but its $34.5 million second weekend is a 65% drop from its opening #1. The film, however, in just two weeks has brought in $170.3 million domestically and a whopping $480.6 million worldwide and won’t be stopping there.
As for the new releases, Now You See Me nudged out After Earth for the #2 slot, bringing in $28 million compared to the latter’s $27 million. The result is impressive for Summit’s magical heist feature, which was tracking just shy of $20 million as it would seem the negative reviews may have turned audiences from one film to the other. It would also seem the audiences that attended the films came away enjoying Now You See Me a little more as it earned an “A-” CinemaScore compared to After Earth‘s “B”.
As for After Earth, while for some a $27 million opening would be something to cheer about, for Will Smith it’s his worst summer opening ever. The film also went into the weekend tracking anywhere from $30-40 million, so the ultimate $27 million haul is approaching flop territory even though the film will likely do well enough worldwide to eek out a profit.
Looking over reader predictions from Thursday, I’ll first point out Laremy’s solid prediction for After Earth, but even he didn’t see the even larger bump for Now You See Me, though he was onto something with his $21.3 million prediction, which was over tracking.
For Now You See Me it was Driver‘s $27.1 million prediction that came closest as many had a hard time going over $20 million though there was a large gathering around the $26 million mark.
The majority of early reader predictions for After Earth were in the $33 million range, but those slowly dipped more and more to the point Aidan Khan was almost spot on with a $25.6 million prediction. Andrew13‘s $26.5 million prediction would have been the closest, but he got his in too late.
Elsewhere this weekend, I do think it’s time I gave Jeff Nichols‘ Mud another mention as it had the strongest hold in the top ten this weekend, dropping only 38% as it brought in another $1.2 million from 580 theaters. The film has so far managed $16.8 million in a very limited release over the course of six weeks now.
On the lower end of the spectrum, in limited release Before Midnight brought in $430,542 from 31 theaters and The Kings of Summer brought in $58,000 and The East tallied $75,600, both from only four theaters.
Next weekend’s results should be interesting. I expect The Internship will end up at #1, but what of the rest of the films as The Purge takes to theaters along with the limited release of Joss Whedon‘s Much Ado About Nothing?
