The Denzel Washington/Mark Wahlberg team-up action movie opened at No. 1 this weekend, even if the opening was a little soft compared to Washington's past genre films. It earned $27 million and a B+ Cinemascore, attracting a mostly male, mostly over 25 crowd that typically attends Denzel Washington's movies. It looks to gross just under $100 million total, which is fine for the $61 million produced film. It was a soft weekend all around, as The Smurfs 2 opened at No. 3 with $18 million ($27 million since Wednesday), and looks to be a disappointment stateside, but the last movie actually did 75% of its business overseas, for a worldwide gross of over $500 million, if you can believe it. So it may actually be fine as it rolls out internationally. The Wolverine fell 59% in its second week, which is typical for the X-Men franchise and looks to end up with about $140 million or so, while The Conjuring held up extremely well again for a total of $108 million so far- a massive success for this $20 million movie, proving that horror films don't have to fall off that huge cliff the second weekend, if you bother to make an actual good one that people are talking about.
Top 5
- 2 Guns- $27.4 million
- The Wolverine- $21.7 million
- The Smurfs 2- $18.2 million
- The Conjuring- $13.6 million
- Despicable Me 2- $10.4 million
Rounding out the rest of the top ten were Grown Ups 2, Turbo, Red 2, The Heat (which is holding great and has a chance to cross Bridesmaids' $169 million total) and Pacific Rim, which hit $92 million this weekend, and may limp across the $100 million mark in the U.S., but is doing terrific overseas, as I thought it would, with $200 million so far and still set to open in Japan, which could be a huge market for it.
In limited release, The Spectacular Now opened big with $200,000 from just four theaters in NY/LA, while Blue Jasmine expanded to 48 screens and grossed over $2 million from them, which indicates that it could be a crossover hit, similar to Midnight in Paris a couple of years ago. Next week Elysium and Disney's Planes face off against mid-week openings We're the Millers and Percy Jackson: The Sea Monsters for a more crowded weekend than this one.
