I’m a little surprised. I expected a big drop for Spider-Man, a lot of super hero films have big first weekends and less significant second weekends. In fact “Iron Man 3”, “Thor: The Dark World”, and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” all dropped between 56-58″ in their second weeks. The surprise to me is that an R-Rated comedy starring Seth Rogen and Zach Efron beat it at the box office by about $14 million. That “Neighbors” did so well is also surprising. The marketing by Universal has been good but nothing amazing, just showing exactly what the movie is, but “Neighbors” is up there with movies like “The Hangover” and “Ted” which had big time openings. It’ll be interesting to see how it holds over with films like “Godzilla” and “X-Men: Days of Future Past” that have large marketing efforts behind them and even bigger names. Along those same lines “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” should see more of a fall off with the next two weekends going with big names in the same genre.
- Neighbors: $51 million makes for a VERY good opening weekend. Especially on an $18 million budget.
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2: A drop of just about 60% bring the web head down to $37.2 million but $147.9 overall domestic and $403 in foreign markets.
- The Other Woman: A 36% drop to $9.25 million in week 3.
- Heaven is for Real: Still holding strong with $7 million in week 4.
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier: In week 6 Cap is down to $5.6 million and just shy of $245 million domestic.
“Godzilla” is the big guns this coming weekend but there is also the Disney sports flick “Million Dollar Arm” about Jon Hamm recruiting a cricket player for major league baseball.
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.