If you thought the Zac Efron, Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller rom-com That Awkward Moment was going to take the top spot, get ready for a record scratch. Instead it was Kevin Hart and Ice Cube and Ride Along taking number one for the third weekend in a row and doing so with ease, dropping 42%.
Ride Along brought in $12.3 compared to only $9 million for That Awkward Moment, which managed a “B” CinemaScore from its largely female (65%) audience. The film, I believe, was one of the first features to fall within the new deal between Focus and FilmDistrict and despite its $8 million budget, Focus only paid $1.5 million to acquire the feature.
Things weren’t much better for Jason Reitman‘s Labor Day, which finally went wide this weekend. The sappy, Nicholas Sparks-esque drama debuted to only $5.3 million on an $18 million budget. Opening day audiences awarded the film only a “B-“, which isn’t too good considering the kind nature of paying audiences willing to give a grade to a survey taker seconds after a movie lets out.
The final film in this weekend’s box office challenge was I, Frankenstein, which dropped a massive 59% after a poor opening weekend to only $3.5 million. Maybe some ideas are just best left to the graphic novels.
In other news, American Hustle became David O. Russell‘s highest grossing domestic release at $132.9 million, besting the $132 million from last year’s Silver Linings Playbook. Also, Lone Survivor crossed $100 million, though I’m not sure if we count that as a 2013 or 2014 film…
Next weekend sees a strong list of films hitting theaters including The Lego Movie, The Monuments Men and, oh yeah, Nurse 3D. I’ll be seeing the two former movies tomorrow and, quite honestly, I’m excited to see both of them.
