The ComingSoon.net Box Office Report has been updated with studio estimates for the weekend. Click here for the full box office estimates of the top 12 films and then check back on Monday for the final figures based on actual box office.
After over three months of box office disappointments, there was a light at the end of the spring/winter tunnel with the first movie to make $40 million in a single weekend, Blue Sky Studios’ animated adventure Rio (20th Century Fox), featuring the voices of Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, George Lopez, Tracy Morgan, Jemaine Clement, Leslie Mann, will.i.am and Jamie Foxx. It opened in nearly 3,800 theaters and averaged roughly $10,000 per site. By comparison, Fox opened Blue Sky’s Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who to $45 million in March 2008 and Robots to $36 million three years earlier. Internationally, Rio continued to do well, adding another $53.5 million, bringing its total worldwide gross to $168 million in just ten days.
The return of Wes Craven’s popular ’90s horror franchise with Scream 4 (Dimension Films) with the returning Courteney Cox, David Arquette and Neve Campbell, showed a disappointing opening with just $19.3 million in 3,300 theaters for second place. It was a pretty serious wake-up call for the franchise whose last installment opened with nearly $35 million eleven years ago.
Universal Pictures’ hit family film Hop dropped to third place with $11.2 million, down nearly 48% from last weekend, but with a total gross of nearly $83 million after three weeks.
The real-life story of Bethany Hamilton as told in Soul Surfer (FilmDistrict), starring AnnaSophia Robb, remained in fourth place with $7.3 million, keeping it just ahead of last week’s #2 movie, Joe Wright’s action-thriller Hanna (Focus Features) with $7.3 million for fifth place.
The Russell Brand-Helen Mirren remake of Arthur (Warner Bros.) dropped to sixth place with just under $7 million and $22.3 million total, followed by the Wan and Whannell horror flick Insidious (FilmDistrict), which remained unhindered by the introduction of a higher profile horror movie to bring in $6.9 million, down just 27% from last week and bringing its total to $36 million after three weeks. The film’s production budget was just $1.5 million making it a bonafide moneymaker for the fledgling distributor who picked the movie up at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
The Jake Gyllenhaal sci-fi thriller Source Code (Summit) took eighth place with $6.3 million, also holding well from last week and bringing its own total to $37 million.
On the other hand, David Gordon Green’s medieval comedy Your Highness (Universal) tanked in its second weekend, dropping 58% and three places to ninth place with $3.9 million and $16 million total compared to a production budget of $50 million.
Bradley Cooper’s Limitless (Relativity Media) wrapped up the Top 10 with $3.8 million and nearly $70 million total gross, a terrific showing for the fledgling distributor.
Robert Redford’s historical drama The Conspirator (Roadside Attractions), starring James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Tom Wilkinson, Kevin Kline and Danny Huston, just missed its chance at a Top 10 opening, bringing in $3.7 million in roughly 700 theaters.
The Top 10 brought in roughly $112 million over the weekend which puts it slightly ahead of last year when Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass (Lionsgate) opened in first place with under $20 million and Neil LaBute’s Death at a Funeral (Sony/Screen Gems) took fourth place with $16 million.
The first part of a proposed trilogy based on Ayn Rand’s popular novel, Atlas Shrugged Part 1 (Rocky Mountain Pictures) took in $1.7 million in its opening weekend in 300 theaters.
Click here for the full box office results of the top 12 films.
