Box Office Report - No Good Dolphin Tale
Monday, September 15, 2014 at 10:00AM Margaret here, back to report on another quiet weekend at the box office. Powered by the considerable force of charisma that Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson supply, home-invasion thriller No Good Deed topped the box office with close to 25 million. In second place is the family film Dolphin Tale 2, which took in decent dollars despite an aggressively bland marketing campaign and the fact that the first one was barely a hit. Guardians of the Galaxy dropped only 22% to third place, and is now the first movie since Frozen to pass $300 million domestically. The Year of Chris Pratt continues.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE
01 NO GOOD DEED $24.5 *new*
02 DOLPHIN TALE 2 $16.6 *new*
03 GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY $8.0 (cum. $305.9) Review
04 ...NINJA TURTLES $4.8 (cum. $181.0) remember the animated one?
05 LET'S BE COPS $4.3 (cum. $72.9)
06 THE DROP $4.2 *new*
The stealth success story here is Let's Be Cops, which, despite abysmal reviews and release in one of the worst cultural climates for an irresponsible-cop-comedy, is limping towards $75 million and a significant profit margin thanks to weak competition and a shoestring budget.
On the limited side, Dennis Lehane-penned crime drama The Drop outstripped its projected haul with $4.2 million from less than 1,000 screens. Such is the magnetic pull of a scruffy Tom Hardy snuggling a pit bull puppy, to say nothing of the chance to see James Gandolfini's final performance.
Other notable limited releases include the Bill Hader/Kristen Wiig tragicomedy The Skeleton Twins, which brought in an impressive per-screen average and is well on its way to crossing the important indie-film benchmark of $1 million, and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, which is getting an unenthusiastic critical response and middling ticket sales. Perhaps audiences are holding out for the Him and Her twofer instead.
Now that we've hit mid-September there are finally some festival hits and critical darlings trickling out into theaters (which admittedly mostly serves those of us in the country's three or four largest cities). I saw The Drop, in which Tom Hardy was absolutely wonderful and Dennis Lehane was entirely Dennis Lehane. What did you see in theaters this weekend? Are any of you at festivals getting sneak peeks at TFE's most anticipated? Who wants to talk about Tom Hardy's mesmerizing Brooklyn accent or that baby pit bull?
Reader Comments (9)
Saw Boyhood. It was an overwhelming experience. Maybe not as intense as La vie d'Adèle. Downside: Patricia didn't have as much screen time as I thought she would. I wish she'd had longer conversations with her son. Maybe that's why the movie felt too straight and distant from my own childhood. It also felt very American (in a good way).
Do ya think the home invasion movie is making a comeback.
Forced by the heat in Los Angeles, my (straight) friend and I saw "Let's Be Cops" to kill time. And, even in the climax, where the two are about to be wiped out by the Big Bad Guy, they STILL would rather say "Fuck You" to each other than "I Love You, Brother".
We're still trying to think of a worse film we saw in the theater.
Peggy Sue: I've been linking Boyhood with Vie D'Adele in my mind too. Very different movies, very different experiences... But the way a coming of age is told so patiently and sympathetically unite them.
mark-- I'd say so, but.. did it ever leave? I feel like the home-invasion movie has been cropping up in box office slow periods in a pretty ongoing way. It's a reliable moneymaker, for whatever reason!
I enjoyed Love is Strange. So great to see a (quality) story about older gays, characters who are typically ignored in our culture as a whole.
I saw The One I Love but not in the theater - we saw it through Amazon Prime for only $7 for HD. VOD isn't something I'll make a habit of but I have to admit it was pretty convenient and cheaper.
The movie was great - the low-key, grounded approach to such a fantastical story really worked. Moss was fantastic and Duplass was good if maybe a bit too low-key and naturalistic.
I wanted to see The Skeleton Twins but life got in the way. Instead, a Jessica Lange festival was had, and that's not a bad Plan B at all. Another rewatch of Tootsie, and I finally tracked down Normal, which I've been looking for for years. A devastating film.
I spent all last week at TIFF and I'm still coming down off the high of seeing so many great movies. I've been going since 2007, and this was the best festival experience I've had so far - two instant classics, another eight or so authentically great movies, six or seven more that I'd gladly recommend to just about anyone. Even the movies that disappointed did so in interesting and ambitious ways. Absolute movie heaven!