The buddy cop comedy Ride Along starring Kevin Hart and Ice Cube set a Martin Luther King weekend box office record as it raced past expectations to nab a 3-day total of $41.2 breaking the $40.1 million record set by Cloverfield in 2008.  The animated comedy The Nut Job also surpassed expectations as it earned an estimated $20.6 million and set a new opening weekend record for a non-studio cartoon feature, but the Tom Clancy-inspired Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit disappointed with a franchise-low debut well under $20 million, and the found footage horror movie Devil’s Due also failed to edify with an estimated $8.5 million.  But with two strong openings and some holdovers getting nice Oscar nomination bumps, the total of the top 12 films at the box office was up 16.3% over the same weekend last year when the horror film Mama topped the charts with $28.4 million.
 
Ride Along had a lot going for it including fast-rising stand-up comedian Kevin Hart, who plays a diminutive rookie at the mercy of a tough veteran cop played by Ice Cube.  The movie’s tagline, "Propose to this cop’s sister?  Rookie mistake," explains the movie’s premise perfectly, and the TV ad campaign hit all the right notes.  Younger viewers made Ride Along a hit with 46% of the film’s audience under 25.  African-Americans made up 50% of the crowd and Hispanics accounted for 30% of the opening weekend throngs that gave the film a solid "A" CinemaScore.  Critics hated Ride Along, which currently has a Tomatometer rating of just 16% positive, but with comedies and genre movies the opinions of the critics often matter little, though it should be interesting to see if Ride Along, which will probably be close to $50 million by the end of the 4-day weekend on Monday, will be able to maintain the momentum generated by its record-breaking debut.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): January 17-19, 2014
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	Ride Along	$41,237,000	2,663	$15,485	$41,237,000	1
2	Lone Survivor	$23,239,000	2,989	$7,775	$74,050,000	4
3	The Nut Job	$20,550,000	3,427	$5,996	$20,550,000	1
4	Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit	$17,200,000	3,387	$5,078	$17,200,000	1
5	Frozen	$11,971,000	2,979	$4,018	$332,602,000	9
6	American Hustle	$10,600,000	2,204	$4,809	$116,431,000	6
7	Devil's Due	$8,500,000	2,544	$3,341	$8,500,000	1
8	August: Osage County	$7,592,000	2,051	$3,702	$18,181,000	4
9	The Wolf of Wall Street	$7,500,000	1,930	$3,886	$90,277,000	4
10	Saving Mr. Banks	$4,147,000	2,449	$1,693	$75,391,000	6

Last week’s winner Lone Survivor dipped just 36% as it added and estimated $23.2 million and bring its domestic total to $74 million after just two weeks of wide release.
 
It is possible that the animated feature The Nut Job, which features a rodent protagonist named "Surly Squirrel" (ripping off Tex Avery’s “Screwy Squirrel”), will overtake Lone Survivor if it can generate enough business with kids on Monday, but even if it does not, its 3-day debut estimated at $20.5 million is way better than expectations.  Produced by Toonbox and animated in Korea, The Nut Job set a new record for non-studio-produced animated features, easily eclipsing the record of $16.8 million held by Coraline.
 
Paramount’s attempt to reboot its Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan espionage franchise with Chris Pine as Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit was met largely with indifference here in the U.S. where the film earned just $17.2 million over the 3-day weekend.  All four previous Jack Ryan films, which starred Harrison Ford (2), Alec Baldwin (1), and Ben Affleck (1) opened with what would amount to 3-day grosses of between $31 and $42 million these days.  The generic TV ads and lackluster promos didn’t help Shadow Recruit much, though the placement in sports and hip cable programming was pretty much on target.  Overseas the film is doing better hitting $22.5 million from about half of the territories, but the audience here in the states was very old with 40% over 50, something that might be expected from a franchise that began more than two decades ago with The Hunt for Red October (1990) and whose most recent entry was more than a decade old (2002’s The Sum of All Fears).  Jack Ryan earned a mediocre "B" CinemaScore, which does not augur well for its domestic prospects, but there is a possibility that the fairly modest $60 million production can make its money back overseas.
 
Meanwhile Disney’s Frozen dropped just 18.7% in spite of direct competition from The Nut Job.  Frozen has now earned $332.6 million, which puts it in fourth place (ahead of Man of Steel) for films released in 2013, and Frozen has an outside chance of catching Despicable Me ($368 million) for third place, especially if it ends up winning the Oscar for “Best Animated Feature.”
 
Speaking of awards and their effect on the box office, right behind Frozen was David O. Russell’s American Hustle, which parlayed its big night at the Golden Globe (and its boatload of Oscar nods) into a 27.7% increase as it earned $10.6 million and brought its domestic total to $116.4 million.  The Oscar nods mean that American Hustle should be a player in the weeks leading up to Hollywood’s big night.
 
Meanwhile the found footage horror film Devil’s Due opened in seventh place with $8.5 million as it posted just a $3,341 per-venue average.  In spite of the innovative mega-viral “Devil’s Baby” campaign, the movie disappointed and its horrible "D+" CinemaScore indicates that it won’t be around long.  After dominating the horror genre for several years after the debut of Paranormal Activity in 2009, it has been lean times lately for the "found footage" genre.  2013 was one of the best year ever for horror movies at the box office, but none of the top films in the genre used the "found footage" gimmick.  But even though the public’s interest in "found footage" films has almost disappeared, their low cost (Devil’s Due was made for a mere $7 million) means that they can “flop” and still end up making some money.
 
Award show exposure also aided the dysfunctional family drama August: Osage County, which ticked up 6.1% and earned $7.6 million, while Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street fell just 15.2% and landed in ninth place.  Wolf, which earned multiple Oscar nominations, could pass the $100 million mark by this time next week. 
 
By way of contrast Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks, which was largely overlooked by the Academy, slipped 36.7% and ended up in tenth place.
 
Check back here next week to see if the horror/fantasy film I, Frankenstein can make an impression on a crowded box office field.