DreamWorks Animation’s Home Pulls Surprise Victory Over Get Hard

The last weekend of March wasn’t the first time that a DreamWorks Animation movie took on an R-rated movie, but few analysts were bullish on Jeffrey Katzenberg’s latest offering Home (20th Century Fox), featuring the voices of Jim Parsons, Rihanna and Steve Martin, besting the controversial Will Ferrell-Kevin Hart comedy Get Hard (Warner Bros).

Home didn’t even need the full weekend to solidify a lead over the R-rated comedy as it scored an impressive $15.6 million on Friday to Get Hard‘s $12.9 million, the latter scoring almost three times as much in Thursday evening previews. As is often the case with family-friendly movies, Home had a nice bump on Saturday to amass an estimated $54 million by Sunday. That made it the biggest opening for a DreamWorks Animation movie in nearly three years since 2012’s Madagascar 3 and their biggest non-sequel opening since 2009’s Monsters vs. Aliens, which just goes to show that one can’t count Katzenberg out after a few disappointing bombs.

Home had already been doing well internationally before its domestic release on Friday, and this weekend, it added another $24 million in 64 territories (55 added on Friday) with it being #1 in 15 of those markets. The UK held well with a second place take of $3.7 million behind the opening of Cinderella. Overseas, Home has grossed $48.2 million so far for a global take of over $100 million.

Meanwhile, Get Hard was still considered a substantial hit, as it grossed an estimated $34.6 million for the weekend or just under $11,000 per theater. It will join some of Ferrell’s other comedy hits like The Other Guys, Blades of Glory and Step Brothers, all which opened in the $30 million range. While it was a smaller opening than Kevin Hart’s 2014 hit Ride Along, it was on par with his earlier hit Think Like a Man, which opened with $33.6 million three years ago.

The Divergent Series: Insurgent, starring Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller, Kate Winslet, Octavia Spencer, Naomi Watts and many more, dropped to third place with $22 million, down 58% from its opening weekend to bring its domestic take to $86.4 million. That’s still down from the $94.4 million gross of Divergent at the same point in time. On the other hand, it has grossed $180.1 million worldwide after adding another $29.9 million internationally this weekend.

Walt Disney Pictures’ Cinderella fell to fourth place with $17.5 million, down 50% in its third weekend due to the influx of new movies, as its domestic gross approached $150 million. Internationally, it added another $38.7 million in 93% of the territories to bring its global gross to $336 million.

David Robert MItchell’s horror film It Follows (RADiUS-TWC) was expanded into 1,218 theaters on Friday following an impressive two-week platform run where it had grossed over $700,000 in less than 42 theaters. It earned just over $4 million, or an average of $3,300 per theater, to take fifth place with RADiUS planning on expanding into more cities next Friday.

That was followed by a bunch of returning movies all in the $2 to 3 million range with Matthew Vaughn’s action-comedy Kingsman: The Secret Service (20th Century Fox) taking sixth place with $3 million to bring its domestic total to $119.4 million. It has grossed over $300 million worldwide, which is a nice profit on a movie that cost a reported $81 million. 

63-year-old Liam Neeson’s crime-thriller Run All Night (Warner Bros.) stayed just narrowly ahead of the religious drama Do You Believe? (Pure Flix Entertainment) and the AARP card-carrying cast of The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Fox Searchlight), all three which ended up around $2.2 million with the latter two in nearly a thousand fewer theaters than Run All Night. Run All Night has grossed $24 million in three weekends compared to “Marigold Hotel’s” $28 million in four 

The relatively younger Sean Penn’s The Gunman (Open Road) took the biggest tumble from last week, as his action flick dropped from fourth place to tenth with $2 million, down 59% from its opening weekend and less than $9 million grossed so far.

On the other hand, the Top 10 was up nearly $20 million from the same weekend last year when Darren Aronofsky’s Noah won the weekend with $44 million. Although March started off slow, this was the third weekend in a row where the Top 2 movies grossed over $70 million, a good precursor for next week’s opening of Universal’s Furious 7, which will be shooting for a new April opening record. 

Noah Baumbach’s comedy While We’re Young (A24), starring Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts, Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried, opened in four New York and L.A. theaters on Friday where it grossed $242,000 or $60,500 per location, which should be a strong enough basis for a wider expansion over the coming weeks.