Box Office: Thanksgiving games
Sunday, November 30, 2014 at 4:30PM Tim here with your box office report for the holiday weekend. And a soft weekend it was, with the two new wide releases - Penguins of Madagascar and Horrible Bosses 2 - both face-planting (the former marking yet another underperformance DreamWorks Animation can't afford right now), and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay 1.0 making a huge amount of money that's still sufficiently less huge than its predecessors that it feels kind of underwhelming. Which is a bizarre thing to say about a movie making a huge sum of money by any standard you could possibly come up with, but such is the bigotry of high expectations. The saggy box office of 2014 continues its relentless march of mediocrity.
While the Hunger Games hold steady in the #1 slot, and almost certain to do it again next week, the most exciting story is about a different game altogether: The Imitation Game, which opened to $482,000 for the three-day weekend at 4 locations. This gives it a mindblowing per-screen average of $120,500, the second-best of the 2014 after The Grand Budapest Hotel in March.
THE TOP DOZEN (Fri-Sun)
01 THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - PART 1 $56.9 (cum. $225.7) Michael's Review
02 PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR $25.8 NEW Tim's Review
03 BIG HERO 6 $18.8 (cum. $167.2) Tim's Review / Nathaniel's Take
04 INTERSTELLAR $15.8 (cum $147.1) Michael's Review / The Podcast
05 HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 $15.7 NEW
06 DUMB & DUMBER TO $38.3 (cum $72.2)
07 THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING $5.1 (cum. $9.6) Nathaniel's Review
08 GONE GIRL $2.5 (cum. $160.8) The Podcast / Jason's Review
09 BIRDMAN $1.9 (cum. $17.2) The Podcast / Nathaniel's Review
10 ST. VINCENT $1.8 (cum. $39.3) Michael's Review
11 BEYOND THE LIGHTS $1.6 (cum. $12.8)
12 FURY $1.6 (cum. $81.9) Michael's Review
PLATFORM / LIMITED
excluding wide openers losing theaters
01 FOXCATCHER $1.0 72 locations (cum. $2.1) Nathaniel's Review / Michael's Review
02 WHIPLASH $.50 179 locations (cum. $4.0) The Podcast / Michael's Review
03 THE IMITATION GAME $.48 4 locations NEW The Podcast / Meet the Contenders
04 ROSEWATER $.36 216 locations (cum. $2.6)
It was a solid weekend overall for the Oscar hopefuls - The Theory of Everything's wide-release expansion more than doubled its whole take in limited release in just three days, while Foxcatcher, still rolling out, had the highest per-screen average of any film to make more than a million for the weekend. Nothing to set the world on fire, but solid performances for the adult-skewing titles. And much the same can be said for the sturdy if not awe-inspiring $27,000 made by The Babadook during its first three days in release at three theaters - and while it has a legitimate shot at precisely no Oscars whatsoever, it's still a top-shelf scary movie that everybody with even a slight affection for horror cinema owes themselves to see at the first opportunity.
What did you see this weekend? Does anyone else think this impressive start augurs well for The Imitation Game with audiences and the Academy?
Reader Comments (14)
I saw The Theory of Everything. It's ok, nothing special. I am a Felicity Jones fan, but she does not deserve to be nominated. Neither does Eddie Redmayne. Not their fault, the script barely gives them things to work with. Eddie's performance turns more into how well he can mimic a horrible illness-
I saw The Theory of Everything this weekend. It's a modest story, but I don't think it needs to be anything other than what it is, and Jones and Redmayne are phenomenal.
I also saw The Theory of Everything. It began as an inferior version of A Beautiful Mind and descended into soap opera. I was a bit perplexed by the film's obsession with Hawking's belief in God, or lack thereof, since in basically ignores his theories and discoveries. And the movie never develops Jane as a character, despite the fact that she is onscreen almost as much as Steven is - we learn very little about her other than she is religious, and devoted to her husband, to an extent.
I agree with Sad man, neither leading performance is particularly notable, but Redmayne will probably win the Oscar - it's what they love.
Tim: Surprised a big studio didn't come to the distributors of The Babadook. Fox, for example, could have come to the people who bought it Sundance, re-bought it, moved it up just over a month, pushed it wide and KILLED Ouija. Horror fans can't willingly want that slop, so why big studios DON'T hunt for good horror and slam it down the week before Halloween astounds.
Suzanne: If it BEGINS as "inferior version of A Beautiful Mind" (already a blandly golden and nearly incoherent sit) and then actually descends from THAT, I'm probably going to hate Theory of Everything.
I wish i could take Hunger Games $225 million and divvy it up among the year's best films so that we'd get more movies like them.
Volvagia - You probably are. A Beautiful Mind had more affecting performances and better rounded characters. But both rely on the same familiar tropes.
Theory of Everything is so much better than A Beautiful Mind.
As for The Babadook, it's also on VOD, which when compared to the VOD/theatrical releases of some recent movies - CAMP X-RAY, HORNS - it's a smash. Those films, and many others make maybe $1000 per screen. $9000 per screen for an indie horror is especially good. And today William Friedkin said it was the scariest movie he's ever seen, so... you know. Wow.
Stayed in and saw these on VOD:
What If (aka The F Word). A delightful, old fashioned yet fresh and quite entertaining romantic comedy. Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan are charming together. Loved the Toronto setting.
The Giver. Ugh. Really disappointed with this one because the book had an interesting premise. I knew the reviews were terrible, but I'm a Streep completist, and I thought, well, maybe...
The November Man. Nice to see Brosnan back as a bad-ass spy, though he hurt (or killed) A LOT of people in this film. But car chases--my favorite action sequences. Not impressed with Luke Bracey. He's like Liam Hemsworth, good looking, but there's nothing there.
Happy Christmas. Loved. Anna Kendrick is my new favorite celeb. I still adore Melanie Lynskey though.
And finally finished Enlightened. Why did they freakin cancel that show? Stupid, stupid, stupid HBO.
Glenn -- i know that VOD is the new world but it still bothers me that they undercut these movies that have saleable elements and raves to market themselves with by suggesting that they are "lesser than" regular features by going immediately on TV. I feel like The Babadook could have had a good large limited release weekend instead of 3 screens. (sigh)
oh and yes, THEORY OF EVERYTHING is way better than A Beautiful Mind.
In theaters, I saw Mockingjay (good enough to justify splitting the book in two, IMO - the only time I've felt that way about this otherwise odious practice) and The Boxtrolls.
The Boxtrolls is delightful - so gorgeously animated, so clever and joyful, though there is something a bit lumpy about it that keeps it from being absolutely top tier for me. I would very much like for it to win the Oscar, but I'm sure it won't.
I finally saw Interstellar this weekend, in IMAX in a completely packed house. The near-constant format shifts bugged the hell out of me, and once again I find myself wishing Nolan bought just a little more wild imagination to his sci-fi, but I still liked it. Absolutely do NOT understand the reviews calling it transcendent, mind-blowing, game-changing cinema, and I think the brothers Nolan wrote themselves into a corner in the last act (everything after the black hole was so OBVIOUS), but I liked it. Just didn't LOVE it. I heard a couple of people saying it was three hours of their life they would never get back on the way out and at no point did I ever think it was that bad.
And yeah, in no universe is A Beautiful Mind better than Theory of Everything, which was quite lovely and very affecting despite the ridiculous golden, gauzy filter over everything.
I saw The Homesman and am still knocking around my opinion of it. Swank and Jones were good (but I doubt she'll be in top 5 best actress performances of the year), but the dramatic moments veered from stark grimness to stagey corniness and the comedy bits ranged from subtle to slapstick.
I guess I liked a lot of the parts but didn't think they added up to a satisfying whole. And loved the Spader cameo! How come I can't stand him on TV but love his small parts in movies like Lincoln and The Homesman?
Nat, while I am definitely still cinema > VOD, most people these days will not go to the movies to see an Australian horror movie. My roommate, however, did pay to watch the film on VOD so I guess it's working in some way. It is frustrating that this film especially is doing it since it actually had a potential to break out. Alas...