For a while there it looked like Godzilla might be the first film of 2014 to crack $100 million, but it didn’t quite have the juice. However, with $93.2 million, it is now the second highest opening of 2014, just under Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($95 million). With a budget of $160 million, this is the seventh highest opening for a non-sequel and had the CinemaScore been a notch higher than “B+” maybe it could have hit that $100 million, but a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to word of mouth probably kept a few people away.
In terms of breaking down the numbers, when people were seeing Godzilla, it seems a lot of them saw it on the biggest screen they possibly could as IMAX screenings account for 14.1% of that total and while the film’s cinematographer, Seamus McGarvey, warned audiences this film was shot as a 2D film and converted into 3D just to satisfy studio greed (my opinion), 3D accounted for 51% of the screenings. What I would love to see are the grades from audiences that saw it in 3D versus those that didn’t. Problem is, if you saw it in IMAX (the best way to see it), you probably also saw it in 3D (the worst way to see it). Too bad.
The weekend’s other new wide release was Disney’s Million Dollar Arm opening in fourth with a very soft $10.5 million, playing to largely an older audience and receiving an “A-” CinemaScore.
Looking at last week’s number on film, Neighbors, the R-rated comedy dropped 47%, bringing in an estimated $25.9 million and raising its domestic cume to $91.5 million in just ten days. Not too bad for a film budgeted at $18 million and considering it is now up to $146.3 million worldwide.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 dropped another 53% and brought in an estimated $16.8 million, bringing its domestic cume to $172 million, $45.7 million less than where The Amazing Spider-Man was at at the same time in 2012. The film is, however, now over $633 million worldwide. The first managed $752.2 million.
Finally, after expanding into 72 theaters, Jon Favreau‘s delightful new film, Chef, served up $734,000 for a $10,194 per theater average.
Next weekend things won’t be slowing down as Fox prepares X-Men: Days of Future Past for the masses and Warner Bros. hopes audiences want to see Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore together again in Blended. I am curious to see how X-Men does at this point. There was talk of a $125 million opening, but with Godzilla doing so well this weekend does that prevent the superhero movie from making so much? There is only so much money to go around and I wonder if audiences might save a little this coming weekend rather than run off to the theater once again for another superhero movie.
