Despite its early late-night success on Thursday, Need for Speed ultimately stalled as the weekend progressed. Looking to obtain the same success that befell Universal’s Fast & Furious series, one would think that fast cars would provide enough adrenaline to make it happen. Early expectations by Disney’s Touchstone Pictures for the DreamWorks release was in the $20 million range, yet it finished with a little over $17 million. Not a good start for Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) for his career post-Breaking Bad. While the film was sought to be critic-proof (it was roasted by a majority of critics), it ultimately sputtered and finished the weekend in third place. On a lighter note, overseas it opened to $45.6 million to bring its overall total to $63.4 million. With international currency dominating box office revenue, this might be a silver lining to both Paul and director Scott Waugh, whose last film, Act of Valor, made $70 million stateside but only $11 million internationally. I guess audiences overseas would rather see actors as Navy SEALs instead of the real deal.
With Need for Speed not having enough horsepower to get to that number one spot, that meant the weekend would be decided by either last week’s number one, 300: Rise of an Empire, or Fox’s Mr. Peabody & Sherman. In the end, audiences (read: kids and their parents) picked the computer-animated toon. By now most of them had already seen The Lego Movie and Frozen is just about on DVD and Blu-ray, so that left Mr. Peabody as the only game in town – until the Muppets arrive on Friday. It finished with $21.2 million to bring its two-week total to $63 million.
That total was a few million above this weekend’s silver medalist, the 300 sequel, which dropped like a stone in losing 60% of its first-week audience. Ouch. Yet it still beat out the Fast & Furious wannabe with $19 million.
Elsewhere in the top ten, Liam Neeson kept doing his Taken sort-of thing and older audiences are still game to see an AARP guy smoke cigarettes on a plane and act a little kooky. Yet Tyler Perry’s latest, The Single Moms Club, was his worst opener as a director ($8.3 million). Still holding strong in the top ten we had The Lego Movie (now at $236 million domestically), and Frozen, which has spent 16 weekends in the top ten! That ties a record set by James Cameron’s Titanic. It’s been in theaters since November 22, 2013. Come on, people, just let it go. See what I did there?
In the lower rungs of the top ten but important nonetheless was the expansion of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and the Kickstarter-funded Veronica Mars movie project for Warner Bros. Last week, Anderson’s film set a per-screen average record for a film opening in limited release, dethroning Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, and pushing Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom to third-best. Opening on four screens it would finish the weekend with $800,000. This weekend, Fox Searchlight expanded the release from four to 66 theaters. The result was $3.6 million and per-screen average of $55,152. That per-screen average bettered the rest of top ten combined (which totaled $37,000).
At only 291 theaters, Veronica Mars: The Movie could only muster $2.02 million. Yet the Kickstarter campaign raised over $5 million. So essentially Warner Bros. gets a movie for free but does little in the way of marketing and hopes to attract an audience outside of the fanbase. That’s probably not going to happen, but WB was smart to also have it available VOD the same day. At least that way fans of the show can stay home and watch it in their pajamas with some MARShmallows.
Also in limited release, A24’s Enemy did respectable numbers with $18k at one theater, and Jason Bateman’s Bad Words accumulated $120k from six theaters.
On tap for the weekend ahead we have Divergent (on 3800 screens) taking on Muppets Most Wanted (on 3000 screens). My money’s on the Muppets topping the box office by this time next week.
Full numbers of the Top Ten below.
01. Mr. Peabody & Sherman (Fox) – $21,200,000 ($63,180,000)
02. 300: Rise of an Empire (Warner Bros.) – $19,105,000 ($78,311,000)
03. Need for Speed (Buena Vista) – $17,808,000
04. Non-Stop (Universal) – $10,615,000 ($68,805,000)
05. Tyler Perry’s The Single Moms Club (Lionsgate) – $8,300,000
06. The LEGO Movie (Warner Bros.) – $7,705,000 ($236,932,000)
07. Son of God (Fox) – $5,400,000 ($50,875,000)
08. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Fox Searchlight) – $3,640,000 ($4,779,000)
09. Frozen (Buena Vista) – $2,117,000 ($396,356,000)
10. Veronica Mars (Warner Bros.) – $2,021,000
