The animated feature film Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 easily topped the weekend box office with an estimated $35 million.  But that total was well below most analysts’ forecasts, many of which were above $40 million. Still it was the 4th biggest September opening ever, but Cloudy didn’t get much help from two other newcomers, and the overall box office was down $9.8 million from the same weekend last year when the animated feature Hotel Transylvania debuted with a September record $42.5 million.
 
The inability of Cloudy 2 to match Hotel Transylvania, which like the Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs movies was produced by Sony Pictures Animation, has to be seen as a bit troubling since the first Cloudy With at Chance of Meatballs movie was a well-received hit and Sony did an excellent job of marketing Cloudy 2 with a series of colorful TV spots that ran in key kid TV venues like the Cartoon Network.  But Cloudy 2 did top its Cloudy 1’s $30.2 million debut, and the sequel will face little competition for its youthful target audience in the coming weeks.
 
Families accounted for 80% of the opening weekend crowd and they liked the film, giving it a solid "A-" CinemaScore.  Critics only gave Cloudy 2 a 58% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, but audience word-of-mouth is worth much more than critical notices in driving admissions to family-oriented animated films.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): September 27-29, 2013
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	Cloudy w/ a Chance of Meatballs 2	$35,000,000	4,001	$8,748	$35,000,000	1
2	Prisoners	$11,270,000	3,290	$3,426	$38,954,000	2
3	Rush	$10,314,000	2,297	$4,490	$10,574,000	2
4	Baggage Claim	$9,300,000	2,027	$4,588	$9,300,000	1
5	Don Jon	$9,000,000	2,422	$3,716	$9,000,000	1
6	Insidious Chapter 2	$6,747,000	3,120	$2,163	$69,544,000	3
7	The Family	$3,674,000	2,894	$1,270	$31,696,000	3
8	Instructions Not Included	$3,380,000	948	$3,565	$38,567,000	5
9	We're the Millers	$2,865,000	2,405	$1,191	$142,418,000	8
10	Lee Daniels' The Butler	$2,417,000	2,062	$1,172	$110,281,000	7

Last week’s winner Prisoners suffered just a 45.9% drop as it earned an estimated $11.3 million to bring its domestic cumulative to $39 million.  Adult dramas like Prisoners that appeal to older viewers tend to have smaller declines, but Prisoners will face stiff competition in coming weeks as several high profile serious films such as Gravity and Captain Phillips debut.
 
Speaking of adult dramas, Ron Howard’s Formula 1 racing drama Rush went wide this past weekend and landed in third place with $10.3 million.  The audience for Rush was slightly male (52%) and quite a bit older (53% over 40).  Critics loved Rush, which earned a stellar 88% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences did as well, giving the film an "A-" CinemaScore.  Like Prisoners, Rush will also have to contend with the heavily hyped Gravity, which opens October 4th.
 
Fourth place went to the romcom Baggage Claim, which stars Paula Patton and debuted with $9.3 million.  With a solid "A-" CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences, Baggage Claim could hang around for some time.  The prospects for Joseph Gordon-Leavitt’s porn-addiction comedy Don Jon don’t appear nearly so rosy.  Don Jon managed to earn $9 million in its debut weekend, but its poor "C+" CinemaScore could put a crimp in future weeks’ earnings.  However since the movie cost just $6 million to produce, Gordon-Leavitt’s directorial effort is still likely to be a moneymaker, just not a very big one.  The audience for Don Jon was evenly split between genders, and older with 66% of the crowd over 25.
 
The horror film Insidious Chapter 2 continues to perk right along as it dropped just 51.1% in its third weekend.  Produced for just $5 million, Insidious Chapter 2 has now earned $69.5 million domestically.  Luc Besson’s dark mafia comedy The Family dropped just 47.5% in its third frame as it brought its domestic total to $31.7 million.
 
The last three films in the top ten have all been around for a while.  The Spanish language movie Instructions Not Included dropped just 37.4% as it earned $3.4 million to bring its domestic cumulative to $38.6 million.  It is now the highest grossing Spanish language film of all time (in the American market), and the fourth highest grossing foreign language movie ever.
 
The raunchy dope-smuggling comedy We’re the Millers earned $2.8 million as it brought its North American total to $142.4 million in its 8th weekend of release, while Lee Daniels’ The Butler earned $2.4 million in its 7th weekend.  Its domestic total is now $110 million--and the socially conscious drama looks like it still has a chance to top $120 million.
 
Check back here next week to see if the IMAX-fueled space drama Gravity, the online gambling drama Runner, Runner, or the concert film Metallica Through the Never can jolt the box office back into positive (year-over-year) territory.