The Russo brothers’ Captain America: The Winter Soldier dropped a "Marvel standard" 56% in its second weekend as it earned an estimated $41 4 million and nosed out Rio 2 ($39 million) for the box office crown. The micro-budgeted horror film Oculus slipped in front of that heavily promoted NFL infomercial known as Draft Day, but the three newcomers’ debuts and solid showings from the top holdovers helped power the total of the top 12 films to a major 22% gain over the same weekend a year ago when the Jackie Robinson biopic 42 topped the box office with $27.5 million.The Winter Soldier’s 56% drop is only marginally better than Iron Man 3’s 58% slip or Thor: The Dark World’s 57% decline. Some analysts were predicting that The Winter Soldier’s better-than-average reviews (now 89% positive on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes) would lead to a marked improvement in the severity of the second weekend decline, but so far the effect of the strong reviews appears to be minor. Marvel Studios’ films generally do a bit better than run-of-the-mill, heavily-hyped action thrillers where second week declines of over 60% are commonplace, so The Winter Soldier’s relatively strong second weekend was expected. The $41.4 million brings the film’s domestic total to a potent $159 million after just ten days.
Overseas the Cap sequel earned $60.6 million from 54 territories bringing its foreign earnings to $317.7 million, fully two-thirds of the movie’s worldwide total of $476.7 million, which already a major improvement over the first Captain America film’s lifetime total of $370.6 million. The $476.7 million total makes The Winter Soldier the highest-grossing film released in 2014 so far--in global terms at least--the Cap sequel has a long way to go to match The LEGO Movie’s 2014 domestic total of $251.5 million.
Rio 2 took the Friday box office and most analysts immediately predicted that the animated film featuring the voices of Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) and Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) would easily win the weekend. Supposedly the good weather in much of the country kept the family audiences away, but the coming weekends will tell the tale. With the other family films in the marketplace mostly played out, and little direct competition for that audience due over the next three weeks, Rio 2 will have no excuses for not hanging around the top of the charts.
The audience for Rio 2 skewed female (57%), and was remarkably diverse (25% Hispanic, 19% African-American, 14% Asian, and 43% Caucasian). Critics were split on Rio 2 (just 51% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), but opening weekend crowds gave the film a rock solid "A" CinemaScore. The original Rio opened to $39.2 million in 2011 (and it faced stiffer competition). Don’t be surprised if Rio 2 ends up with similar domestic numbers to its predecessor, but like most big Hollywood films from the past few years, it will more than make up for any domestic shortfalls in the growing overseas market. Rio 2 won the "global box office" weekend with $62.3 million and has already earned $125.2 million overseas.
| Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): April 11-13, 2014 | ||||||
|
| Film | Weekend Gross | Screens | Avg./ Screen | Total Gross | Wk# |
| 1 | Captain America: The Winter Soldier | $41,398,000 | 3,938 | $10,512 | $159,006,000 | 2 |
| 2 | Rio 2 | $39,000,000 | 3,948 | $9,878 | $39,000,000 | 1 |
| 3 | Oculus | $12,000,000 | 2,648 | $4,532 | $12,000,000 | 1 |
| 4 | Draft Day | $9,750,000 | 2,781 | $3,506 | $9,750,000 | 1 |
| 5 | Divergent | $7,500,000 | 3,110 | $2,412 | $124,877,000 | 4 |
| 6 | Noah | $7,450,000 | 3,282 | $2,270 | $84,872,000 | 3 |
| 7 | God's Not Dead | $5,485,000 | 1,860 | $2,949 | $40,700,000 | 4 |
| 8 | The Grand Budapest Hotel | $4,050,000 | 1,467 | $2,761 | $39,470,000 | 6 |
| 9 | Muppets Most Wanted | $2,193,000 | 2,261 | $970 | $45,670,000 | 4 |
| 10 | Mr. Peabody & Sherman | $1,825,000 | 2,001 | $912 | $105,215,000 | 6 |
The critics/audience split was exactly the opposite for the "single-room" horror movie Oculus, which managed a superb (for a horror film) Tomatometer reading of 71% positive, but received a pitiful "C" grade from audiences. Still with a budget of just $5 million, Oculus should be well on its way to profitability with its opening weekend earnings of $12 million.
Ivan Reitman’s Draft Day, which stars Kevin Costner as the beleaguered general manager of the Cleveland Browns, will undoubtedly do very well on TV in the future as football fans warm to the movie’s authentic settings and yet another sterling portrayal of an aging athlete by Costner. But the film’s $9.7 million debut from nearly 2800 theaters has to be seen as a disappointment. With a cost of just about $20 million Draft Day will eventually make its money back, but it appears that it might just take a while.
The fifth spot went to the YA adaptation Divergent, which dropped just 42.2% during its fourth weekend as it earned an estimated $7.5 million and brought its domestic total to $124.9 million. The launch of this new YA novel-based franchise has gone well here, but the film has yet to catch on overseas where it has earned just $50 million.
Darren Aronofsky’s Biblical epic Noah slipped 56.3% in its third weekend as it fell to number six. So far the semi-controversial $125 million film has earned just $84.9 million domestically, but it has done almost twice as well overseas ($162 million).
The Christian-themed God’s Not Dead dropped just 29.3% as it earned $5.4 million and brought its total to $40.7 million. Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel added $4 million, bringing its domestic total to $39.5 million. It should surpass The Moonrise Kingdom ($45 million), and has a chance to overtake The Royal Tannenbaums ($52 million) and become the auteur-director’s highest grossing domestic release.
Jim Jarmusch’s avant garde vampire pic, Only Lovers Left Alive that stars Tilda Swinton and the red hot Tom Hiddleston (Loki) opened in just four theaters and earned a potent per-venue average of $24,250. Last week’s limited release sensation, the arty sci-fi/horror film Under the Skin, which stars Scarlett Johannson, brought its theater count up from 4 to 54, but took its per-theater average down to a pedestrian $5,722 in the process.
Check back here next week as the Johnny Depp-starring original science fiction film Transcendence opens along with Disney’s animal saga Bears, plus the horror/comedy A Haunted House 2 and the Christian drama Heaven Is for Real--and for comic book movie fans, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will debut in the UK next week, so some preliminary overseas box office info should also be available.
