This will be strictly concerning new releases, as there are quite a few this weekend.
There are five films that opened on at least 500 screens, as well as one one expansion title (The Woman In Gold) that added 500 screens this weekend. So its going to be a little crazy around here. To wit, thethreebig wide releases were Sony's Sony'sPaul Blart: Mall Cop 2(3,633 theaters),Universal/Comcast Comcast Corp.sUnfriended2,739 theaters), and Walt Disney's Walt Disney's Monkey Kingdom(2,012 theaters). The lower-run debuts are 20th Century Fox's Fox'sTrue Story(831 screens) and Lions Gate Entertainment's Lions Gate Entertainment'sChild 44(510 screens). I think you can guess how most of this played out, but into the depths we dive!
The top new release of the weekend isPaul Blart: Mall Cop 2, which earned a solid $7.3 million on its opening day. Considering that Paul Blart: Mall Cop opened with $31min January of 2009 and ended up with $146m domestic, still the biggest-grossing January release ever that wasnt a wide expansion of a December Oscar contender, Im surprised it took six years for a sequel. Sadly not only was this sequel allegedly eye-poppingly terrible, but it wasnt even aDie Hard 2-style upgrade in terms of violence and carnage. No, Paul Blart does not allow a crowded passenger jet to crash nor does he stab a baddie with an icicle.
No one was expecting the unasked-for Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2: Blart Harder to equal the first films $186m worldwide gross (on a $26m budget), although I wouldnt rule out a diminished domestic take with a bigger overseas gross thanks purely to market expansion.as such, the sequels $23m weekend has to be viewed as a moderate victory. Sony has had a rough several months, including a new reveal of pretty much all of the hacked emails this week courtesy of WikiLeaks, which I thought was supposed to be about exposing clandestine government secrets and/or wrongdoing? By all means, WikiLeaks, expose the horrible truth about how Spider-Man ended up returning to the Marvel cinematic universe! Next well find out Julian Assange is the one who leaked thatBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justicetrailer.
The next big new release isUnfriended, the surprisingly terrific little horror movie told entirely from the point-of-view of one teenage girls laptop and the various social media feeds she uses to communicate with her (allegedly) doomed friends. The film (deservedly) got terrific reviews, so the fact that it earned $6.8 million last night is solid (yay for original horror in theaters!) and a little disappointing (its less thanOuijawhich opened with $8.3m, albeit with a Halloween release date, a known property, and a PG-13). Still, Im not going to rain on the parade of a $1m festival acquisition that will make around 15x its budget back by tomorrow. I dont usually care about Cinemascore grades, but Im a little puzzled that this one, like most horror films, ended up with a (normal for horror) C grade. Considering this one gives you exactly what you want considering the premise, I dont see where audience dissatisfaction might have come from. Anyway, its a great little original horror film, so if you dont see it in theaters, you cant complain when we get thatChilds Playremake you all know were eventually going to get.
Walt Disneys Monkey Kingdomearned $1.55 million on its opening day, which is lower than normal but not outlashingly so for theseDisneynature documentaries.Walt Disney has spent the last several Earth Day weekends putting out kid-friendly nature documentaries, and this is just the latest example. If youve seen any, then you know the drill. Basically the footage is jaw-dropping and often beautiful, but the somewhat jokey narration is provided by a celebrity and the footage is edited in a way to suggest a narrative arc and/or the animal protagonists doing things and feeling things that humans can relate to. This is the sixth Disneynature documentary, which I guess means the next one will be the team-up action spectacular.
Monkey Kingdom involves (wait for it) monkeys. It is narrated by Tina Fey, which means my wife will make fun of me for wanting to see it (dont worry, Im sure Jim Parsons or Cillian Murphy will narrate the next one). The films arent mega moneymakers (Earth did a whopping $32m in 2009 while Chimpanzees did $28m in 2012, but otherwise these are strictly under-$20m affairs), but they do serve as gateway drugs for very young children into the world of nature and conversation. In that sense, they are a social and moral good. Anyway, this one will likely be the lowest-grossing of them all, with an opening of around $4.5m and a total of around $16m in America.I was planning on taking my family to this one last night, as has become something of a tradition. But my daughters school decided to plan an Earth Day field trip to the local multiplex this week, so that idea was out the window. Alas
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2015/04/18/friday-box-office-paul-blart-2-trumps-unfriended-child-44-bombs/
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