DreamWorks' animated Home took the box office crown this weekend, overperforming expectations with $54 million, but perhaps it's not so surprising given the lack of family fare at the box office this year. The last animated hit was the SpongeBob movie, and despite lackluster reviews, Home managed to attract that family audience. In second place was Get Hard, which had even worse critical approval and still earned $34.5 million for the weekend, making it Will Ferrell's biggest debut since 2010's The Other Guys, and his second biggest ever after Talladega Nights (which opened back in 2006 with over $50 million). It's also more than Kevin Hart's last opener The Wedding Ringer, which pulled in $20 million in January.
Insurgent fell 57% for $22 million, but the buzz continues to die real fast (I can't help but wonder if every single studio's decision to split the last book in a trilogy into two movies, solely to earn more money, finally looks set to backfire in this case), while Cinderella fell another 50% for fourth place, still performing well for Disney with the majority female audience. Rounding out the top five was the indie horror flick It Follows, which expanded to over 1,000 theaters and managed to earn over $4 million for the effort. That would already make it Radius-TWC's highest grosser ever, after last year's Snowpiercer, and shows that had it expanded sooner or even opened wide, may have been a big hit, at least on the level of other cheapie horror films (which would have been nice for one that's actually supposed to be good).
Top 5:
- Home- $54 million
- Get Hard- $34.6 million
- Insurgent- $22.1 million
- Cinderella- $17.5 million
- It Follows- $4 million
In limited release, Serena, the long delayed Bradley Cooper/Jennifer Lawrence period drama, fell flat on its face as expected, after desperate attempts by the studio to hide the movie as long as possible in order to minimize the damage to its stars, who were both reported to be terrible in this. Suffering bad buzz and horrific reviews for over a year now, the turkey was finally released on VOD and put in just 60 theaters, earning a pitiful $1k per screen average. Meanwhile, Noah Baumbach's While We're Young, starring Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts and the only critically acclaimed new release in theaters this week, did very well, earning a $60k per screen average on just 4 screens, making it Baumbach's highest limited debut ever. Next up it's Easter weekend, which should mean some solid holds, and a likely massive debut for Furious 7, the latest in the popular franchise and the last to feature the late Paul Walker. See you then!
