With the major studios holding back on their blockbusters in the week preceding the release of Man of Steel, Universal stole the march on its competitors with its micro-budgeted ($3 million) high concept (and highly absurd) thriller The Purge, which easily topped the box office with a $36.4 million haul that was almost double what many analysts had predicted.  Meanwhile Joss Whedon’s black-and-white adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing debuted potently in very limited release and the reunion of The Wedding Crashers’ stars Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan in the R-rated comedy The Internship largely fizzled as it opened meekly in fourth place as the total of the top 12 films fell15% from the same weekend last year when Madagascar 3 topped the box office with a debut total of $60.3 million.
 
The Purge, which is the first film produced for Universal by Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity), generated the biggest opening ever for Ethan Hawke, who plays the head of a suburban family who has to defend his home from attack during the one night of the year in which all crime (even murder) is legal.  As government and civilization become more entrenched and crime rates continue to fall, post-apocalyptic, every-man-for-himself, fantasy futures continue to appeal to contemporary audiences’ fascination with the breakdown of civilization.  In The Purge an even more crime-free future is enabled by the once-a-year venting of criminal impulses, but, all absurd premises aside, the scenes of a heavily armed suburban family fighting off marauding gangs come right out of the contemporary fears of the breakdown of civilization that apparently drive the actions of many Americans who own assault rifles including Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina.  With all sorts of post-apocalyptic sagas (World War Z, This Is the End, Elysium, etc.) slated to hit the box office this summer, it would be ironic it The Purge, with its tiny budget, turns out to be the most profitable of the lot.
 

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): June 7-9, 2013
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens		Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	The Purge	$36,379,000		2,536	$14,345	$36,379,000	1
2	Fast & Furious 6	$19,760,000		3,771	$5,240	$202,946,000	3
3	Now You See Me	$19,500,000		3,020	$6,457	$61,374,000	2
4	The Internship	$18,100,000		3,366	$5,377	$18,100,000	1
5	Epic	$12,100,000		3,594	$3,367	$84,155,000	3
6	Star Trek Into Darkness	$11,700,000		3,152	$3,712	$200,140,000	4
7	After Earth	$11,200,000		3,401	$3,293	$46,592,000	2
8	The Hangover Part III	$7,380,000		3,242	$2,276	$102,374,000	3
9	Iron Man 3	$5,787,000		2,351	$2,462	$394,316,000	6
10	The Great Gatsby	$4,230,000		2,160	$1,958	$136,175,000	5

So the success of The Purge (at least here in the U.S.) is not unexpected, though it may be short-lived.  Like so many of the micro-budgeted horror films The Purge received a very poor grade from opening weekend audiences, which gave the film a lousy "C" CinemaScore.  The fact that The Purge dropped 38% from Friday to Saturday testifies to the film’s poor word-of-mouth, and also to the efficacy of Universal’s ad campaign, which relied to a great extent on inexpensive digital media to get the news of the film’s high concept premise out to wide audience.  The Purge did particularly well with Hispanics (an increasingly important portion of the movie-going audience) who made up 33% of the audience.  Women accounted for 56% of the opening weekend crowd, and the "R" rated thriller did very well with the 18-25 demographic, which made up 56% of the audience.
 
Second place apparently went to Fast & Furious 6, which earned an estimated $19.7 million as it brought its domestic cumulative to $203 million after just 3 weekends of release.  The magician/caper film Now You See Me finished a very close third as it dropped just 33.6% in its second weekend to earn an estimated $19.5 million and brought its ten-day domestic total to $61.4 million. 
 
This week’s other wide release, Shawn Levy’s The Internship, an "R" rated comedy about two overage Google interns (Owen and Vaughan), failed to generate the box office magic of 2005’s Wedding Crashers, which earned $209.3 million and did a lot to establish raunchy "R" rated comedies as a successful box office genre.  Wedding Crashers debuted with $33.9 million and a potent $11,589 per theater average, which was more than twice as good as The Internship’s $5,377 average.  The bad news is that The Internship will face direct competition from the even raunchier post-apocalyptic "R" rated comedy This Is the End, which opens on Wednesday, but the good news is, that in spite of the fact that Google just isn’t as cool as it was five years ago when this project got underway, The Internship earned a sold “B+” CinemaScore, which could translate into the kind of “legs” that will keep the movie in theaters for weeks to come.
 
Both Fox’s animated feature Epic and Paramount’s Star Trek Into Darkness posted solid holds with J.J. Abrams’ latest Star Trek movie earning $11.7 million to bring its domestic total to $200.1 million, which is just behind the $209.3 million that Abrams’ first Star Trek movie had earned domestically at the same point in its box office run. Overseas the movie is running 40% ahead of its 2009 predecessor, but the film which now has a worldwide total of $376.4 million still has a ways to go to break even.
 
Another film that will be heavily dependent on doing well overseas to break even is Will Smith’s After Earth, which plummeted 59% in its second weekend as it fell from third place to 7th as it earned an estimated $11.2 million.  The movie did considerably better overseas by earning $45.5 million, but it still has a very long way to go to even get a whiff of breaking even.
 
Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 remained in the top ten for the sixth straight week as it added $5.8 million to bring its year-to-date leading total to $394.3 million.  IM3 should become the first film to pass the $400 million mark domestically next weekend.
 
Opening in just five theaters Joss Whedon’s micro-budgeted adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing managed a mammoth $36,000 per screen.  While Whedon’s Shakespeare film has little chance of making a major box office impact, it should be interested to see how many of the writer/director’s numerous followers will check out this obvious labor of love, a movie that is largely set in the director’s house, that features many of his friends, and was made during the director’s brief bit of “downtime” after completing The Avengers.  Much Ado, which has a rating of 78% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, has been a hit with the critics and its theatrical performance may just surprise those who expect that adaptations of the works of the Bard will have only an extremely limited appeal.
 
Be sure to check back next weekend to find out if Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and the "R" rated post-apocalyptic comedy This Is the End can get the 2013 movie season back on track.