The story today is that people will watch anything. With a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2” still was seen by enough people to make just shy of $24 million dollars. It didn’t do well enough to take first place, but it still did just a little less business than the original…I don’t have the words.
“Furious 7” had another solid weekend, falling 51% and cleaning up overseas. It has now made over $1 billion and could make around $1.4 billion by the time it is done. China especially loves the film and it has made over $250 million there. It is also now in 7th place of all time earners.
Along with Blart there was a new horror movie that did well by horror standards but is getting awful reviews, including ours, and shouldn’t carry over much into the next week. “Unfriended” opened at $15.8 million but if it follows most other horror films especially found-footage films it will drop sharply.
Next week is sparse with some expansions but nothing big and then… AVENGERS!
| Rank | Title | Studio | Weekend Gross | % Change | Total Gross | Week # | |||||
| 1 | Furious 7 | Uni. | $29,156,595 | -51.1% | $294,510,675 | 3 | |||||
| 2 | Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 | Sony | $23,762,435 | – | $23,762,435 | 1 | |||||
| 3 | Unfriended | Uni. | $15,845,115 | – | $15,845,115 | 1 | |||||
| 4 | Home (2015) | Fox | $10,608,947 | -42.8% | $142,917,827 | 4 | |||||
| 5 | The Longest Ride | Fox | $7,020,782 | -46.1% | $23,681,298 | 2 | |||||
A quick note on budgets and dollar figures:
Films making back their budgets is a good sign, but that is just the money to film. It doesn’t include distribution and marketing. Marketing can cost as much as a film. That big Superbowl spot is spendy. So take that into account when judging a film’s success. Hitting $100 million isn’t the same as it once was.
All dollar amounts in the top 5 come from estimates based on ticket sales unless noted otherwise. Occasionally this article will be published when actual results come out, which is usually late Monday afternoon. For more about this and other ins and outs of movie tracking click here.