Dawn of the Planet of the Apes fell just 50% and easily topped the weekend box office with an estimated $36 million, while the horror film The Purge: Anarchy debuted with a healthy $28.4 million and Disney’s Planes: Fire & Rescue bowed with $18 million, but the overall box office was down 26% from the same frame last year when The Conjuring debuted with $41 million.  With no Pixar release and weak slate of summer blockbusters many analysts predicted that this would be a down summer for Hollywood, but with ticket revenue down 30% in July it would appear that unless things turn around in July, this summer season could end up being a lot worse than anticipated.
 
But you certainly can’t blame Fox’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which registered just a 50.4% drop in its second weekend.  With 60% drop-offs now the standard for heavily-hyped blockbusters, a 50% fall counts as a real win.  Great reviews, solid word-of-mouth, and the lack of any substantive competition all helped Dawn avoid the fate of so many of its rivals.  With a domestic total of $139 million already, Dawn could well finish its domestic run in the $225 million range, a substantial increase on 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ total of $176.8 million.
 
Dawn is doing well overseas with $60.5 million earned over the weekend, though, because of the World Cup there is a backlog of movies and a slower overseas rollout.  Still Dawn scored a 47% bigger opening than its predecessor in the U.K., and doubled Rise’s total in Russia, so it appears likely that Dawn, like all of 2014’s other blockbusters, will benefit greatly from the expanding international box office.
 
The Purge: Anarchy earned $28.4 million, which is down just 17% from The Purge’s $34 million debut in 2013.  This is not bad considering that the original film earned over half its total during its opening weekend--in other words the "one night a year when all crime is legal" premise enticed moviegoers, but they hated the film, which got a lousy "C" CInemaScore.  The Purge: Anarchy is a better film and it managed a mediocre "B" CinemaScore from an opening weekend audience that was young (61% under 25) and gender balanced (52% female).  But don’t expect The Purge: Anarchy to avoid a big second week drop-off--that comes with the territory, but this $9 million production is already in the black.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): July 18-20, 2014
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	Dawn of the Planet of the Apes	$36,000,000	3,969	$9,070	$138,953,000	2
2	The Purge: Anarchy	$28,369,000	2,805	$10,114	$28,369,000	1
3	Planes: Fire & Rescue	$18,000,000	3,826	$4,705	$18,000,000	1
4	Sex Tape	$15,000,000	3,062	$4,899	$15,000,000	1
5	Transformers: Age of Extinction	$10,000,000	3,224	$3,102	$227,157,000	4
6	Tammy	$7,605,000	3,402	$2,235	$71,253,000	3
7	22 Jump Street	$4,700,000	2,229	$2,109	$180,509,000	6
8	How to Train Your Dragon 2	$3,800,000	2,169	$1,752	$160,672,000	6
9	Maleficent	$3,302,000	1,541	$2,143	$228,367,000	8
10	Earth to Echo	$3,260,000	2,450	$1,331	$31,979,000	3

Third place this weekend went to Disney’s Planes: Fire & Rescue, a spin-off of last year’s Planes, itself a spin-off of Pixar’s Cars.  Planes: Fire & Rescue’s $18 million debut was down 19% from Planes’ $22 million bow last August.  Given the lack of competition for the family audience, Planes: Fire & Rescue’s debut has to be a disappointment for Disney, but the opening weekend audience, 42% of which was under the age of 12, gave the film an "A" CinemaScore, so it’s way too early to write off Fire & Rescue.
 
If Planes: Fire & Rescue’s debut was a bit of a disappointment for Disney, Sex Tape, which stars Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, is a much bigger headache for Sony.  Sex Tape earned just $15 million, way less than other Diaz comedies like The Other Woman ($24.8 million) and Bad Teacher ($31.6 million), and even less than Seth Macfarlane’s bomb A Million Ways to Die in the West ($16.8 million).  With poor reviews (just 20% positive on Rotten Tomatoes) and a poor "C+" CinemaScore, Sex Tape looks like it may disappear quickly, though it may well find some success on video.
 
Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction slipped to # 5 as it added $10 million to bring its domestic total to $227 million.  It still trails X-Men: Days of Future Past ($230.4 million) and Maleficent ($228 million), but it should pass them before Comic-Con to become the #1 film of the summer.  Catching Captain America: The Winter Soldier and The LEGO Movie (both around $257 million) remains possible but unlikely.
 
However Age of Extinction is doing so well overseas that no one at Paramount is worrying about the film’s domestic slippage.  So far Age of Extinction, which has topped the international box office for four weeks in a row and brought in another $81.2 million this weekend, has earned $886 million worldwide and could surpass a billion even before it opens in Japan and Spain in August.
 
Tammy, which stars Melissa McCarthy, dropped just 40% in its third frame as it added $7.6 million to bring its domestic total to $71.2 million.  While not a huge hit like Identity Thief or Bridesmaids, Tammy, which cost just $20 million to produce, is solidly in the black.
 
The "R" rated comedy 22 Jump Street remained in the top 10 in its sixth weekend of release as it brought its domestic total to $180.5 million.  With the lack of other break-out comedy hits, 22 Jump Street still has an outside chance of topping the $200 million mark.
 
Keep your eyes on Richard Linklater’s critically-acclaimed Boyhood, which expanded to 34 theaters and earned $1.2 million for a stellar $36,303 per-screen average.  IFC plans to roll the film out slowly so it will take some time to see if Boyhood can escape the art film ghetto and find mainstream success.
 
Be sure to check back here next week to see if Scarlett Johannson, utilizing 100% of her brain, can rule the box office in Luc Besson’s action-packed Lucy, or if Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson can complete an eighth labor of Hercules and top the box office as the legendary Greek strongman in the comic book-based Hercules.

--Tom Flinn