In non-American Sniper news, Johnny Depp and George Lucas's respective new movies tanked on their debut weekends, while Jennifer Lopez’s low-budget thriller scored big on its opening weekend.
The top new opener of the weekend was the Jennifer Lopez potboiler The Boy Next Door. The $4m Universal/Comcast Corp. release earned $15 million on its debut weekend, or about four times its budget. This shouldn't be too surprising, as Lopez is one of the more recognizable people in the country and there hasn't been much over the last few months that explicitly targeted women above the age of puberty, so this is a good opening act for Fifty Shades of Grey. The $15m debut would be right in the upper-level of her wheelhouse as a lead, and it’s her biggest live-action opening since Monster-In-Law’s $23m debut in May of 2005, which remains her biggest live-action debut weekend. Make fun of her and the unapologetically trashy-looking film all you want, but she is a name and she gets people into the theater. If it plays similar to Halle Berry’s (painfully underrated) The Call from March 2013 ($6.1m opening day/$17.1m debut weekend/$51.8m domestic final), it gets to around $45m and earns ten-times its budget just in domestic theatrical. That’s one way to make money. The film played 71% female, 60% over-25 years old, and 51% over 30 years old. It also played 45% Hispanic, 33% Caucasian, 10% African American, 5% Asian, 7% "others."
Johnny Depp’s Mortdecai was a sadly expected box office disaster. The $60 million Lions Gate Entertainment/Odd Lot Films production earned just $4.13m over the weekend. I was among the few critics who somewhat liked this unapologetically goofy adult comedy, but the writing was on the wall. Now you’ll see a bunch of articles about how this is fourth flop in a row. Dark Shadows and The Lone Ranger both earned over $245 million worldwide, they both just cost way too much ($215m and $150m respectively). And Into the Woods, in which he was featured in the advertising, has just crossed $121m domestic. Johnny Depp really isn't a box office draw outside of the Pirates of the Caribbean films and the various Tim Burton fantasies. He was considered box office poison before Curse of the Black Pearl and that really hasn't changed give-or-take an occasional Public Enemies and The Secret Window. And all of your “career rehab” articles aren't going to do a darn thing. Depp marched to the beat of his own drummer before he was a “star” and he continues to do so. As long as he can find someone to put up $60m for a film like Mortdecai, well, that’s the perks of having power, no?
The last new release is the Walt Disney animated film Strange Magic. The film actually came from Lucasfilm (George Lucas was among its writers and producers) and it was released under the Touchtone banner, which was not a sign of confidence. And sure enough, the poorly reviewed film earned just $5.5 million on its first weekend, which is a superb 4.2x weekend multiplier. I don’t have the budget for this fantastical variation on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but let’s be honest for a second. Disney didn’t buy LucasFilm so it could make money off of the rare Lucas passion project. Disney could lose all of the money on this one and fund Red Tails 2 and still come way out ahead thanks to that whole Star Wars thing they have their hands on. I would argue this release is tantamount to a favor, and Lucas’s interviews where he mentioned that The Force Awakens didn't use any of his Star Wars Episode VII ideas (which should not be news as the script underwent a major overhaul in late 2013) are basically a gift as Disney attempts to distance the new film(s) from the somewhat disliked prequel trilogy.
Debuting in limited release is the Jennifer Aniston Oscar vehicle that wasn't, Cake. The Freestyle Releasing release (sorry) earned $1 million on its first weekend in 482. That’s not very strong, but 99% of the publicity for the film, in fact arguably the whole reason for the film’s existence, was about Jennifer Aniston’s would-be Oscar nomination. That didn't happen, so there is little reason to talk about the solid-but-unremarkable drama at this point. Oh, and the Anne Hathaway musical drama One Song opened in 27 theaters this weekend and should earn about $75k for its effort. It is also available on nationwide Video On Demand so I imagine that is how most of us (including myself) will watch it. And the Jude Law submarine thriller Black Sea opened in five theaters yesterday and earned $35k for its effort. It expands to 300 theaters next weekend.
In holdover news, Paddington earned $12.39 million on its second weekend (-35%) for a $40.5m ten-day domestic total. Add that to the $127m the film has earned overseas and Paddington’s Big Score should be just around the corner. Kevin Hart’s “look, there are white people in this movie!” cross-over attempt seems to have helped just a little. The Wedding Ringer, the poorly-reviewed comedy co-starring Josh Gad, earned $11.6m for its second weekend (-44%). The $23m comedy now has $39.6756m, and its drop was noticeably less than About Last Night (-70%), Think Like A Man Too (-64%) and even the 48% drop of Ride Along last year. It’s a solid win for the comedy mogul, and I’m curious to see how pairing him with Will Farrell affects his fortunes when Get Hard opens at the end of March.
The Imitation Game earned another $7.14 million for the weekend (+13%) and end the frame with $60.64m, surpassing The Grand Budapest Hotel to be the second-highest grossing Best Picture nominee. I was a little hard on the film last weekend after it didn't quite hold up post-Oscar nominations, but I was wrong in light of this almost miniscule drop. It will surpass the respective ninth weekend total of The King’s Speech by tomorrow, so the comparisons are still apt. Taken 3 is dropping fast, which is understandable as American Sniper stole what little mojo the terrible threequel had post opening weekend. Still, the $48m thriller earned $7.6m in its third weekend and has now earned $76.05m. It’s not touching Taken or Taken 2 domestically, but $100m domestic is still a possibility. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part I earned $1m for a $334.3m domestic total while Pantelion Films's Spare Parts earned $900k (-33%) for a $2.7m cume.
Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s Selma earned $5.5 million for its third weekend. That’s a decent 33% drop and gives the Martin Luther King biopic a $39.22m domestic cume. It should barely out-gross Malcolm X ($48m, but back in 1992), but (and this is a big "but") may-well top 12 Years A Slave ($56m) if it holds out over the Oscar season. Universal/Comcast Corp.’s Blackhat earned just $1.6m (-59%) on its second weekend and has now earned just $7.1m domestic. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies earned another $2.85m (-43%) to bring its domestic cume to $249.5m while Inherent Vice earned $400k (-65%) to bring its cume to $7.419m. Unbroken earned $2.1m giving the Angelina Jolie directorial effort $112m domestic.
In Oscar news, it was a weekend of expansions and upticks. Fox Searchlight’s Birdman won the Best Picture prize at last night Producer’s Guild Awards and earned $1.85 million after adding 362 theaters for a total of 833 theaters. The Michael Keaton fantasy has now crossed $30m domestic. The Theory of Everything (+349 theaters for 858 total) earned $1.3m (+34%) for a $29m total. Whiplash (+378 theaters for 567 total) earned another $800k for the weekend (+120%!) to bring its cume to $7.6m after sixteen weeks of play. Julianne Moore's Still Alice earned $411k from 38 locations to bring its total to $0.72m. Finally Boyhood (+64 theaters for 197 total) rose 3% in its twenty-ninth weekend and earned another $229k to bring its cume to $25m.
That’s it for this weekend. And for American Sniper weekend box office news, go HERE. Next weekend sees a crowded slate of lower-profile films. Relativity releases the Kevin Costner/Octavia Spencer inter-racial adaptation drama Black and White, Paramount offers the found-footage time travel thriller Project Almanac, and Open Roads offers the “five guys do bad things in a shared apartment” drama The Loft. In the meantime, enjoy this Rentrak top-ten chart:
