For the third weekend in a row, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper lead the weekend box office by a wide margin.This time around the film brought tin $31.9 million, beating out the next closest film, Paddington, which brought in only $8.5. There is not a whole lot to say about American Sniper that hasn’t been said many times over, but it continues to be propelled by several Oscar nods, as well as the controversy surrounding its subject material and the actions of its real-life protagonist.
The found footage time travel film, Project Almanac, took in $8.5 million over its opening weekend, already closing in quickly on its modest $12 million budget. Critical reception of the film has been leaning towards negative, but nothing overwhelming. While it is directed by Dean Israelite, Michael Bay is credited as a producer so the film has mostly been tagged as a “Michael Bay” film.
Following that was another debut, Black or White, which also performed well in 1,823 theaters nationwide. While it’s being panned by critics for taking an otherwise good message and churning it through a mediocre form of story-telling, it still brought in $6.5 million over the weekend.
Rounding out the top five was The Boy Next Door, which saw a great job in revenue week-over-week, down nearly 60%. Despite a minor bump in theater presence (up 13 over last week), the Jennifer Lopez project only brought in $6.1 million. It’s already blown past its $4 million budget however, so it’s far from a bust of a movie, at least financially – even if it is sitting at a terrible 14% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The most curious entry this weekend by far was not technically a film at all. Releasing in 205 select IMAX theaters was Game of Thrones, which aired two episodes from the show’s fourth season, as well as an exclusive trailer for the upcoming fifth season. While the trailer leaked online likely quicker than Game of Thrones wanted it to – resulting in them uploaded it themselves on Facebook – the experiment still worked out. All told it made a solid $1.5 million, for a $7,322 per-theater average.
This weekend’s big per-theater average winner was none other than Running Man. Not 1987’s The Running Man, mind you, but a foreign-language spinoff of a popular South Korean television show that has been turned into a feature length film. The 90-minute comedy brought in $205,000 in only 20 theaters for an impressive $10,250 per-theater average.
Overall, this was a down weekend compared to last week, but still one of the strongest end of January/beginning of February weekend in the past three years, with a 22.6% bump over 2014’s similar weekend.
And what exactly happened this weekend last year? Would you surprised if I told you that Frozen was the second highest grossing film? You shouldn’t be, because that’s what happened once again. After almost dropping out of the top five the weekend prior, it shot back up the charts and brought in another $8.9 million for Disney. The unstoppable juggernaut lost only to Ride Along, which brought in $12 million.
[button type=”link” link=”http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2014&wknd=05&p=.htm” variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: Box Office Mojo[/button]
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
