The big news in the box office world over the weekend of October 10-12th, 2014 was actually not true. People freaked out when boxofficemojo.com went down and redirected to IMDB.com, both of which are owned by Amazon. Variety and a few others were reporting it was dead. The site was just down for maintenance and all the reactions were over nothing.
For the weekend there were quite a few new movies and they were extremely varied in their audiences and subject matter. “Dracula Untold” stands alone as a …horror action flick? I don’t even know what to call it, and it very well may be the rebirth of the Universal Monster franchise. “Alexander” is an adaptation of a children’s book that is what you expect when you take a children’s book and turn it into a feature length film. It’s at 65% on rottentomatoes.com and has likable leads. “The Judge” sends Robert Downey Jr. back to the courtroom as a fast talking lawyer with a disappointed judge for a father. 3 very different movies and they all landed within $10 million of each other, but none could unseat “Gone Girl.”
| Rank | Title | Weekend Gross | % Change | Total Gross | Week # | ||||||
| 1 | Gone Girl | $26,406,134 | -29.6% | $77,887,324 | 2 | ||||||
| 2 | Dracula Untold | $23,514,615 | – | $23,514,615 | 1 | ||||||
| 3 | Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day | $18,360,230 | – | $18,360,230 | 1 | ||||||
| 4 | Annabelle | $15,855,329 | -57.3% | $61,645,901 | 2 | ||||||
| 5 | The Judge | $13,116,226 | – | $13,116,226 | 1 | ||||||
Next week sees Brad Pitt’s “Fury” as well as the animated film “The Book of Life.”
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 films 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.