“American Sniper” barely slowed down. With a small drop of only 28% it still brought in $64 million. That puts it as the best second weekend for a film that opened over $80 million. It’s also the widest release for an R-rated film, playing at over 3700 theaters. If the momentum continues it will end up with close to $400 million, currently it has grossed $200 million.
While “American Sniper” was raking it in, the other films in the top 5 were failing. Jennifer Lopez’s “The Boy Next Door” looked like a generic “Erotic Psycho Guy Thriller.” It seems like a sexualized version of another Lopez movie, “Enough.” It was very average, pulling in just shy of $15 million and getting awful reviews. It may double its current earnings by the end of its run.
The rest of the top 5 were average, but 2 new films with big names attached were both giant bombs. “Mortdecai” and “Strange Magic” are literally 2 of the worst openings in history, at $4.2 million and $5.5 million respectively. George Lucas’ “Strange Magic” had one of the worst openings for a movie at over 3,000 locations while Depp’s “Mortdecai” is the worst start for a Lionsgate film in wide release. With “Mortdecai” and “Transcendence” (which opened at more than double what “Mortdecai” did) Depp has been the star of 2 massive failures very recently.
| Rank | Title | Studio | Weekend Gross | % Change | Total Gross | Week # | |||||
| 1 | American Sniper | WB | $64,628,304 | -27.6% | $200,400,417 | 5 | |||||
| 2 | The Boy Next Door | Uni. | $14,910,105 | – | $14,910,105 | 1 | |||||
| 3 | Paddington | W/Dim. | $12,266,287 | -35.3% | $39,937,717 | 2 | |||||
| 4 | The Wedding Ringer | SGem | $11,309,381 | -45.2% | $39,385,881 | 2 | |||||
| 5 | Taken 3 | Fox | $7,412,597 | -49.6% | $75,863,651 | 3 | |||||
The biggest opening next weekend is the found footage style “Project Almanac” which has had a solid marketing push and will be interesting to watch.
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.