Dreamworks Animation’s Mr. Peabody & Sherman slipped just 34.2% in its second weekend and claimed a narrow box office victory with an estimated total of $21.2 million that was just enough to nip last week’s champ 300: Rise of an Empire, which earned an estimated $19.1 million.  Newcomers Need for Speed and Tyler Perry’s The Single Moms Club disappointed, but solid performances from holdovers and surprising showings from two films in limited release, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and Rob Thomas’ Veronica Mars, helped propel the total of the top 12 films to a 5.7% gain over the same weekend last year when Sam Raimi’s Oz: The Great and Powerful topped the charts for a second consecutive week.
 
Although Mr. Peabody & Sherman opened somewhat disappointingly last weekend, the film’s "A" CinemaScore and solid critical notices indicated that it would have a long run in theaters.  Mr. Peabody continues to face strong competition for its target family audience from Warner Bros.’ The LEGO Movie and Disney’s Frozen, both of which suffered small declines (under 30%) and remained in the top ten.  Though it got off to a slow start, Mr. Peabody appears to be righting itself.  So far the $145 million film has earned $63.2 million domestically and $69.9 overseas.
 
Last week’s champ, the comic book-based 300: Rise of an Empire, fell 57.6%, which actually represents a pretty solid hold for a sword-and-sandals action epic, especially when faced with a new heavily-hyped competitor for the action movie audience (Need for Speed).  Produced for $110 million, Rise of an Empire continues to do well overseas where it has earned $158 million for a worldwide total of $236.3 million.
 

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): March 14-16, 2014
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	Mr. Peabody & Sherman	$21,200,000	3,951	$5,366	$63,180,000	2
2	300: Rise of An Empire	$19,105,000	3,490	$5,474	$78,311,000	2
3	Need for Speed	$17,808,000	3,115	$5,717	$17,808,000	1
4	Non-Stop	$10,615,000	3,183	$3,335	$68,805,000	3
5	Tyler Perry's The Single Moms Club	$8,300,000	1,896	$4,378	$8,300,000	1
6	The LEGO Movie	$7,705,000	3,040	$2,535	$236,932,000	6
7	Son of God	$5,400,000	2,990	$1,806	$50,875,000	3
8	The Grand Budapest Hotel	$3,640,000	66	$55,152	$4,779,000	2
9	Frozen	$2,117,000	1,466	$1,444	$396,356,000	17
10	Veronica Mars	$2,021,000	291	$6,945	$2,021,000	1

Dreamworks’ Need for Speed, which stars Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad, appears to be the latest in a long line of disappointing video game adaptations from Hollywood.   In spite of an extensive TV marketing campaign, Need for Speed opened well below expectations with just $17.8 million.  Dreamworks can ill afford another bomb, but fortunately for the studio, Need for Speed, which cost just $66 million to produce, is doing better overseas where it earned $45.6 million, almost half of which came from China ($21.2 million).  The film attracted the audience the studio was aiming for—just not enough of them.  Opening weekend crowds were 70% male with 56% from the 18-34 demographic and 13% from the hard to reach 12-17 crowd.  Need for Speed’s low production cost and solid foreign sales will keep it from becoming a financial disaster for the studio, but it doesn’t appear at this stage that it will have great "legs."
 
Universal’s Liam Neeson action thriller Non-Stop dropped just 32.9% in its third weekend in theaters as it brought in an estimated $10.6 million that brought its domestic total to $68.8 million. 
 
The Single Moms Club posted the lowest opening total ($8.3 million) ever in the career of prolific writer/director Tyler Perry.  As is typical for Perry’s work, the audience was predominantly female (79%) and older (80% over 25).  They gave the film a solid "A-" CinemaScore, which does hold out hope that the Lionsgate release will have some more time in theaters to connect with its target audience, otherwise The Single Moms Club may go down as one of the director’s rare misfires.
 
Meanwhile The LEGO Movie just keeps chugging right along.  In its sixth weekend in theaters the franchise-founding megahit dropped just 29.4% as it added $7.7 million, bringing its domestic total $236.9 million, by far the highest amount earned by any film released in 2014 so far.  
 
The biggest surprise of this weekend is the performance of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, which expanded from 4 theaters to 66 and earned $3.6 million, which was good enough for 8th place thanks to its amazing $55,152 per-venue average, by far the best in the top ten.
 
The next best average in the top ten belonged to Rob Thomas’s Veronica Mars, which managed to earn an average of $6,945 from 291 theaters for a total of $2 million.  Financed largely by a Kickstarter campaign, the $6 million movie was also available for digital download on Friday.  Due to opposition from theater owners, who are desperate to preserve their exclusive "window" to show movies before they are available digitally or on disc, Warner Bros. had to rent the 291 theaters to show the Veronica Mars movie, which is based on the cult hit TV series.  With solid reviews (76% positive on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes), the Veronica Mars movie might be able to stay around for a while, though the possibility that its strong opening showing was due to a fairly small coterie of diehard fans of the TV show could, coupled with opposition from theater owners, could mean that its stay in theaters will be a very short one.  So far the studio has not released any details on the number of digital downloads of the film that have been sold, but if the movie is successful, Kickstarter campaigns may offer a viable way to circumvent studio opposition to projects that the moguls don’t feel have a broad enough appeal.
 
Outside the top ten, Hayao Miyazaki’s final film The Wind Rises earned $412,000 from 305 theaters, bringing its domestic total to $4.1 million.  The Wind Rises still has a chance to pass Howl’s Moving Castle ($4.7 million) and become the director’s third highest-grossing film (out of 5 released here) in North America after Ponyo ($15 million) and Spirited Away ($10 million).
 
Check back next week to see if Divergent, Lionsgate’s latest attempt to adapt a popular YA series of novels, will find success like the Twilight and Hunger Games films, or failure like the adaptations of hit YA series Mortal Bones and Beautiful Creatures, or if the box office crown will go instead to Disney’s Muppets Most Wanted.