Despite horrible reviews, there remained enough of a devoted audience to the iconic 20-year-old Farrelly Brothers comedy to mount a win at the box office for Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, whose Dumb and Dumber To came in first place with $38 million and a "B-" Cinemascore. Obviously it was never a movie made for critics, so it shouldn't be surprising that fans of the original didn't care about the negative response, but it's hard to say if it will stick around longer than a weekend, considering the audience reaction was fairly tepid as well.
Meanwhile, Big Hero 6 was a close second, pulling in $36 million for the weekend, which is a miniscule drop from last week (in fact, it's the best second weekend for a non-Pixar Disney animated film ever), and I'd say this looks pretty set to stick around for quite a while, as kids are clearly loving it. Interstellar dropped to third with $29 million, but that's actually a pretty good 39% drop from last week too, so those two films are clearly benefiting from some good word of mouth. The new release Beyond the Lights came in fourth with $6 million and Gone Girl remained in the top five for its seventh week with another $4 million, showing some amazing staying power over its run.
Top 5:
- Dumb and Dumber To- $38.1 million
- Big Hero 6- $36 million
- Interstellar- $29 million
- Beyond the Lights- $6.5 million
- Gone Girl- $4.6 million
In limited release, Foxcatcher opened extremely well on 6 screens, for a $48k average, but we're now in the time of year where awards buzzed, limited release films will have a lot of great openings but not necessarily expand well as they are platformed out. It's hard to say what films are going to catch on with the general public. Case in point, Birdman and Whiplash, which are starting to suffer some as they expand to more theaters, despite the critical acclaim. Finally, Jon Stewart's Rosewater opened for a modest $1.2 million from 371 theaters. Next week it's the big Hunger Games movie, so you can expect that to dominate everything for a while, as it aims to top the year's box office for the second year in a row.
