Box Office: Home Surpasses Expectations With $54 Million Weekend, Get Hard A Solid Second Place Finisher

Box Office, Columns, News

Before the start of the weekend I was asked for a date movie recommendation of movies new in release. It wasn’t a great weekend for treating significant others, unless they wanted to see The Big Bang Theory‘s Sheldon Cooper as a talking alien or Will Ferrell try to surviving being raped in prison.

Not surprisingly, DreamWorks Animation’s Home opened to better than expected results. As I’ve stated in the past, next to horror movies, family flicks (especially those that are animated) are money at the box office. Home is no exception. Its $54 million weekend is better than the performance of last June’s How to Train Your Dragon 2, which had a three-day opening of $49.4 million. Home‘s opening is also DWA’s eighth-best opening all-time and the second best since DWA films started being distributed by 20th Century Fox. (The record is the $60.3 million netted by Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted in June 2012.)

With families dominating the cineplex it would have taken a Herculean effort to have a restricted comedy take first place. The combined forces of Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart may not have propelled Get Hard to the top of the box office, but a $34.6 million three-day total was enough for it to leap frog last week’s #1, Insurgent, which lost 57.8% of it opening weekend audience – its predecessor, Divergent dropped 53.1% in the second weekend. That’s a little disappointing for Summit Entertainment, but it could be worse. The studio could have been the one to release Sean Penn’s $40 million The Gunman, an action-thriller that has only made $8.8 million in two weeks. Ouch.

Getting back to Get Hard, the second-place finish is still another hit for Kevin Hart. Since stealing the show in Think Like a Man he’s been on quite the role as a headlining draw. With the exception of About Last Night his movies have opened north of $20 million on a consistent basis.

The other big development in the top 10 is the performance of Radius-TWC’s It Follows. The combination of critical buzz and a strong per-screen average last week had the micro distributor forgo a release on VOD to expand the small budget title into more theaters. The result was a win. Adding 1,186 screens allowed the horror movie to net approximately $4 million.

In limited release, Ben Stiller’s While We’re Young made $242k at four locations; the Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence starring Serena made $110k at 60 locations; Magnolia’s White God collected $16k at two locations; and Man of Reno made $12.6k at two locations.

This upcoming weekend it’s all about Furious 7 and if it can surpass early estimates that have it pegged to have a $115 million opening.

Full Top 10 below.

01. Home – $54 Million
02. Get Hard – $34.6 Million
03. The Divergent Series: Insurgent – $22 Million ($86.3m)
04. Cinderella – $17.5 Million ($150m)
05. It Follows – $4 Million ($4.75m)
06. Kingsman: The Secret Service – $3 Million ($119.4m)
07. Run All Night – $2.2 Million ($23.8m)
08. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – $2.18 Million ($28.1m)
09. Do You Believe? – $2.15 Million ($7m)
10. The Gunman – $2 Million ($8.8m)

Travis Leamons is one of the Inside Pulse Originals and currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Inside Pulse Movies. He's told that the position is his until he's dead or if "The Boss" can find somebody better. I expect the best and I give the best. Here's the beer. Here's the entertainment. Now have fun. That's an order!