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| Diego Luna, Matt Damon and Wagner Moura (r) in Elysium |
Summer 2013 has been far from kind for Sony Pictures (After Earth, White House Down) but hopes were high for Elysium, Neill Blomkamp's follow-up to 2009's surprise hit District 9. How big a hit? Sony forked over $115 million to secure the worldwide rites to Blomkamp's next project. Elysium debuted #1 this weekend, but its $30.4 million take was below expectations ($35-40M) adding fuel to fire for dissatisfied stockholders (that means you Daniel Loeb.)
Elysium (our pick for best picture of the year, so far) did well with males (61% of its audience) and earned an A- CinemaScore with moviegoers 18-24) but a B overall: What movie were they watching? Keep in mind, White House Down scored an A- (even Grown Ups 2 earned a B!) I keep saying this, but CinemaScore may be the single most useless statistic in the movie business. Yet here I am, informing you: Go figure.
Four new films surpassed last week's #1 2 Guns ($11.1M) which slid all the way down to fifth place overall (dropping 58.9% in its second weekend.) Warner Bros. Pictures' We're the Millers continued to do well, placing second overall ($26.6M) for Friday-Sunday, and an even better $38 mil since Wednesday's opening. Disney's Planes ($22.5M) did OK, but cost only $50 million to produce. Meanwhile, Fox 2000's Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters opened poorly ($14.6M, $23.5M since Wednesday) and proved to be the bad idea I thought it was from the word GO. The first Percy Jackson (which was awful) fared much better, earning $31.2 million over Friday-Sunday, President's Day weekend 2010. Sea of Monsters cost over $90 million: Good luck getting that back.
The top 10 films for this weekend...
1. Elysium $30.4M
2. We're the Millers $26.6M
3. Planes $22.5M
4. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters $14.6M
5. 2 Guns $11.1M
6. The Smurfs 2 $9.5M
7. The Wolverine $8M
8. The Conjuring $6.7M
9. Despicable Me 2 $5.7M
10. Grown Ups 2 $3.7M
