The year-over-year total take at the North American box office was up 11% this past weekend, but with four new films debuting into an already crowded marketplace, none of the newcomers fared very well.  Neil Blomkamp’s dystopian science fiction thriller Elysium topped the three-day weekend B.O. derby with an estimated $30.5 million, but that was less than Blomkamp’s low budget sci-fi thriller District 9, which earned $37. 4 million when it opened in August of 2009.  The best performer of the current lot was probably the brain dead pot-smuggling comedy We’re the Millers, which earned $26.5 million over the weekend and $38 million since it opened on Wednesday.  Two films that targeted the family audience Disney’s Planes and Fox’s Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters both suffered from competition from a glut of family movies in theaters.  But in spite of the lackluster debuts, none of the quartet of new films is likely to lose a lot of money, since the films’ budgets are relatively modest, though conversely it doesn’t appear that any of them will be huge moneymakers either.
 
The way it looks now the summer of 2013 will set a new domestic box office record, but the increase in the total box office take will not necessarily be in line with the major increase in expenditures by the studios as they flooded the market with an unprecedented number of expensive "tentpole" films.
 

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): August 9-11, 2013
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	Elysium	$30,400,000	3,284	$9,257	$30,400,000	1
2	We're the Millers	$26,555,000	3,260	$8,146	$38,044,000	1
3	Planes	$22,525,000	3,702	$6,085	$22,525,000	1
4	Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters	$14,600,000	3,031	$4,817	$23,457,000	1
5	2 Guns	$11,128,000	3,028	$3,675	$48,517,000	2
6	The Smurfs 2	$9,500,000	3,867	$2,457	$46,600,000	2
7	The Wolverine	$8,000,000	2,867	$2,790	$111,986,000	3
8	The Conjuring	$6,700,000	2,650	$2,528	$120,745,000	4
9	Despicable Me 2	$5,748,000	2,395	$2,400	$338,314,000	6
10	Grown Ups 2	$3,700,000	2,102	$1,760	$123,800,000	5

Blomkamp’s politically charged Elysium opened below analysts’ expectations.  The only film in the quartet of newcomers that actually received any critical support (66% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes), Elysium attracted an audience that was 61% male (is sci-fi the one remaining genre that attracts a consistently male audience?), and received a "B" CinemaScore, though younger viewers (18-24) gave the film a positive "A-" rating.  The weaker-than-expected opening was more bad news for Sony, which is under pressure from "shareholder activist" Daniel Loeb.  With U.S. grosses running well behind District 9, which earned $115.6 million here, Sony’s major hope for Elysium, which it acquired for $115 million, will be overseas, and the film did open well in Russia and Taiwan.  Domestically Elysium did particularly well in IMAX locations, which brought in 16% of the film’s domestic total on just 328 screens.
 
We’re the Millers could muster just a 41% positive rating from the critics, but the “R” rated comedy managed an "A-" CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences.   Reviews simply don’t matter much when it comes to raunchy comedies filled with "dumb as a post" characters (see Grown-Ups 2).  With a cost of just $37 million, Warner Bros. appears to be in good shape with The Millers since comedies tend to stay around in theaters longer and have a high “multiples” (final domestic gross divided by the opening weekend take). 
 
Third place went to another modestly budgeted film, Disney’s Cars-like Planes, which was produced by the studio’s "direct-to-DVD" unit for just $50 million.  Critics hated this transposition of the plot of Pixar’s Cars to the world of airplanes, giving it just a 24% positive rating, but the target audience had other ideas and gave the film a solid "A-" CinemaScore.  With a gap of seven weeks before the next animated family movie (Cloudy With a Chance of Meaballs 2) opens, Planes should have plenty of time earn a nice profit for the studio--and the film is clearly the most "toyetic" of this summer’s rugrat-targeting features.
 
Perhaps the weekend’s biggest loser was Fox’s Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, which took in just $14.6 million over the 3-day weekend, a far cry from the $38.7 million that the first Percy Jackson film earned over the extended President’s Day weekend in 2010.  But as is the case for the rest of this week’s new films, the studio’s investment in the new Percy Jackson film was relatively modest ($90 million), and, while Sea of Monsters is unlikely to match The Lightning Thief’s $88.8 million domestic total from 2010, it should do well overseas where the first Percy Jackson movie earned 61% of its $226 million total.  But since The Lightning Thief barely made any money for the studio, unless Sea of Monsters does manage to improve its performance outside the U.S., this could be the end of the YA novel-based franchise.
 
Last week’s winner, Universal’s 2 Guns, which is based on the comic book written by Steven Grant, slipped 58.9% as it earned $11.1 million and tumbled to fifth place.  So far the film, which cost $61 million, has earned $48.5 million.  Like so many of this summer’s film the success of 2 Guns will depend on the overseas market, and Universal is holding the movie back a bit since foreign markets are glutted with Hollywood product right now (along with domestically produced films), so the final totals for the film are still quite a ways off, though it is certainly off to a solid start here in North America.
 
Sixth place went to the live-action/animated hybrid The Smurfs 2, which dropped 46% in its second weekend as it earned $9.5 million.  While The Smurfs 2 still trails the domestic total of the first Smurfs movie, it is doing better overseas where it has earned over 70% of its worldwide total of $156 million.
 
In its third weekend in theaters Fox’s The Wolverine tumbled 62.5% as it earned $8 million and brought its domestic total to nearly $112 million.  But that represents just 36.5% of the film’s worldwide total of $306 million.  Like many of this summer’s films, The Wolverine, which cost $120 million to produce (a modest total for a major studio tentpole), won’t lose money for the studio, though it probably won’t earn a huge amount either.
 
Eighth place went to Warner Bros.’ hit horror film The Conjuring, which brought its domestic total to nearly $121 million, a very nice haul for a movie that cost just $20 million.  The even bigger success, Despicable Me 2 slipped to #9 in its sixth weekend in theaters.  The $76 million animated feature, which has earned $338.3 million here and $407.5 million overseas, has to rate as one of the summer’s biggest hits.
 
The final spot in the Top Ten went to Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups 2, which brought its domestic total to $123.8 million.  In spite of its triumph over poor critical notices, Grown Ups 2 won’t make a lot of money for Sony thanks to its $80 million cost, unless it can up its overseas earnings (and comedy doesn’t travel as well as spectacle).
 
Eighteen films earned over a million dollars at the box office last weekend, another indication of just how crowded (and deep) the box office has become.  Guillermo Del Toro’s $190 million Pacific Rim is now close to $100 million domestically ($96.8 million), and fortunately for Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures that represents just 28.1% of the film’s worldwide total of $344.2 million.  While it is hardly a major money loser on the scale of The Lone Ranger, Pacific Rim still has a long way to go to earn back its cost.
 
While this column often talks about the importance of foreign markets to Hollywood films, it should be noted that the Bollywood hit Chennai Express opened well here as it earned $2.2 million from just 196 theaters as it posted a solid $11,352 per screen average.
 
Check back here next week to see how a new batch of films including Kick-Ass 2: Balls to the Wall, Lee Daniel’s The Butler, the Steve Jobs biopic Jobs, and the high stakes thriller Paranoia starring Liam Hemsworth will fare as they enter the crowded late summer movie marketplace.