Box Office: Neighbors Come Out On Top

Amir here, with the weekend's box office report. Three new films were released, all of which surprised with their numbers but in different directions. Neighbors, the Seth Rogen/Zac Efron comedy beat The Amazing Spider-Man 2 to first place, and while that isn't surprising in and of itself, the fact that it raked in $51m certainly is. I quite like Seth Rogen, at least compared to other dudebro-y comedians of the moment, and Rose Byrne is a treasure, but I couldn't find the enthusiasm to drive to their neighbourhood just yet. Maybe when the film is out DVD...

Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return turned out to be a flop of catastrophic proportions, the likes of which I don't think I've ever seen. It managed a paltry 1.4k per screen average. Mom's Night Out is yet another "faith-based" film, this time dressed as a comedy - not that Heaven Is For Real and God's Not Dead aren't (unintentional) comedies, but I digress. Moms' Night Out didn't do as well the other recent religious stuff, but its mere existence surprises me. Surely its production isn't a reaction to the success of other faith-based films, but I wonder how studios emerged with this kind of material all at the exact same moment. Further research into this shall be done soon!

01 NEIGHBORS $51.0 *new* Review
02 THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 $37.2 (cum. $147.9) 
03 THE OTHER WOMAN $9.2 (cum. $61.7) 
04 HEAVEN IS FOR REAL $7 (cum. 75.2)
05 CAPTAIN AMERICA 2 $6.5 (cum. 244.9) Review  
06 RIO 2 $5.1 (cum. $113.1)  
07 MOMS' NIGHT OUT $4.2 *new*
08 LEGENDS OF OZ: DOROTHY'S RETURN $3.7 new
09 DIVERGENT $1.7 (cum. $145) Review
10 BRICK MANSIONS $1.5 (cum. $18.3)

For the second week running, there was no arthouse title making waves though both Jon Favreau's Chef and Gia Coppola's Palo Alto performed respectably. I spent the weekend at home, catching up with some classics and enduring the pain of gouging my eyes out at the sight of We're The Millers. What were you up to, dear readers? Did you take your mother to a movie?