You may have thought The Conjuring was going to be big, but did you think it was going to have one of the highest grossing openings for an R-rated horror film ever? With $41.5 million this weekend the new James Wan-directed feature is the highest grossing original R-rated horror of all-time, with only a few sequels and prequels besting it otherwise — Paranormal Activity 3 ($52.5m), Hannibal ($58m) and Prometheus ($51m) — not adjusted for inflation of course.
The film earned an “A-” CinemaScore from opening night audiences and with no other horror films in sight it’s not like it has much genre competition to slow it down. Of course, horror films don’t tend to have legs the same as films in other genres, but there is still a lot of money left to be made by this one.
The win for The Conjuring put an end to the four week reign animated sequels have had on the box office, but it’s not like Despicable Me 2 slowed down any. Bringing in another $25 million this weekend, the sequel is now up to $276 million domestically and managed to outgross the weekend’s incoming animated flick, Turbo.
After opening rather weak on Wednesday, Turbo is just an ill-timed release having Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 eating up the family dollar for the last month. As a result, the film had one of the worst debuts for a Dreamworks Animated feature ever with $21.5 million over the weekend and only $31.2 million total since Wednesday.
Of course, opening box office isn’t a sign of quality as Dreamworks’ Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit opened with only $16 million back in 2005 and Chicken Run with only $17.5 million back in 2000, but still, that’s just a matter of trying to make someone feel better as that is a bad start for a film budgeted at $135 million. But who knows? Maybe the “A” CinemaScore it received will give it some legs? Is snail racing big overseas? It did make $22.6 million abroad this weekend from 28 markets.
Next up is Red 2, which had a solid “B+” CinemaScore, just slightly lower than the 2010 original’s “A-” and its opening weekend numbers followed suit. Red opened with $21.7 million in 2010 while Red 2 brought in $18.5 million this weekend. The big difference is the first film was budgeted at only $58 million while the sequel cost a reported $84 million. The original had some long legs, but I don’t see the same luck for the sequel.
Finally, it was a sad state of affairs for R.I.P.D. as the aptly titled feature opens itself up for the most obvious of D.O.A. jokes, opening at merely $12.7 million. It’s not a good weekend to be Ryan Reynolds as his latest bid at a comic book adaptation bombs and his voice didn’t bring any added dollars to Turbo. Has Reynolds now stolen Taylor Kitsch‘s thunder?
I also felt I should mention last week’s top dogs as Grown Ups 2 fell 52% with $20 million and Pacific Rim dropped a healthy 57% for a $15.9 million second weekend. Sort of interesting to see that a film that generated so much conversation only a few days ago will likely be out of the top ten and out of mind within only three weeks. Speaking of which, The Lone Ranger is now out of the top ten, dropping another 63%. It’s only been in theaters for 18 days and it seems like the conversation around it ended a year ago.
In limited release The Way, Way Back and Fruitvale Station remained tremendously strong in limited release. Way, Way Back brought in $2.2 million from only 304 theaters while Fruitvale managed $742,000 from 34 theaters for a $21,832 per theater average. By comparison, Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Only God Forgives opened in only 78 theaters and brought in $315,000 ($4,039 per).
Looking at Laremy’s and the aggregate of the reader predictions, clearly The Conjuring sneaked up on most everyone just as most everyone over-played R.I.P.D.‘s chances, but as you’ll see below, not everyone was stumped.
Laremy’s Predictions
- Turbo – $30.2 million
- The Conjuring – $26.5 million
- Red 2 – $24.7 million
- R.I.P.D. – $22.5 million
Your Predictions
- The Conjuring – $30.8 million
- Turbo – $30.3 million
- Red 2 – $22.2 million
- R.I.P.D. – $18.3 million
Next weekend sees the release of The Wolverine, which everyone was raving about out of Comic Con just yesterday, and the Aubrey Plaza-led The To-Do List, which should do decent with the female audience. In 2009, X-Men Origins: Wolverine opened to the tune of $85 million, do you see any way this new one comes close to that number?
