Denzel Washington and his brand of ass-kicking won the box office for September 26-28, 2014. “The Equalizer” is the latest R-Rated Denzel film and his 10th straight to open higher than $20 million. That’s impressive, the man has a brand and people love it.
Along with “The Equalizer” opening there was also the stop motion film “The Boxtrolls” that did fairly well. It actually is the second highest opening for the animation company, Laika Animation. “The Maze Runner” got up to just shy of $58 million and it looks like it’ll stop around $100 million.
“Guardians of the Galaxy” eclipsed “Iron Man” and needs to make $90 million more domestically to beat “Iron Man 3” to take the number 2 spot behind “The Avengers” in the MCU.
| RANK | TITLE | Weekend Gross | % Change | Total Gross | Week # | ||||||
| 1 | The Equalizer | $34,137,828 | – | $34,137,828 | 1 | ||||||
| 2 | The Maze Runner | $17,437,020 | -46.4% | $57,955,347 | 2 | ||||||
| 3 | The Boxtrolls | $17,275,239 | – | $17,275,239 | 1 | ||||||
| 4 | This is Where I Leave You | $6,894,340 | -40.4% | $22,441,091 | 2 | ||||||
| 5 | Dolphin Tale 2 | $4,788,153 | -46.0% | $33,618,190 | 3 | ||||||
Next week we have the following with “The Good Lie” being the only one not opening in wide release.. I have to recommend “Gone Girl” purely because a friend worked on it.
| Annabelle | |
| Gone Girl | |
| Left Behind | |
| The Good Lie |
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.