by Tim Barley and mike reyes
Cocktails and Movies Winds Back The Weekend of June 6th – 9th
What did YOU see this weekend? Cocktails and Movies knows, and we’re not afraid to prove it!
Welcome to The Purge… It’s a killer.
If this past weekend wasn’t an unpredictable skirmish, then you must have been sitting in the bargain theater where Iron Man 3 is still kicking some ass in AAA ball. We went two out of three with the top slots, putting too much faith in one property and not enough in the other. Mr. and Mrs. movie-goer, you continue to surprise us and that’s fine with us! Just so long as we know about it in advance. (Hey, this prediction market is a good way to make a name for yourself in the industry…)
Box Office Results 6/7 – 6/9 (courtesy of Box Office Mojo):
1. The Purge: Actual – $36.4 mil., Prediction: $28 mil.
2. Fast and Furious 6: $19.8 mil.
3. Now You See Me: Actual – $19.5 mil., Prediction: $15 mil.
4. The Internship: Actual – $18.1 mil., Prediction: $23 mil
5. Epic: $12.1 mil.
6. Star Trek Into Darkness: $11.7 mil.
7. After Earth: $11.2 mil.
8. The Hangover Part III: $7.4 mil.
9. Iron Man 3: $5.8 mil.
10. The Great Gatsby: $4.2 mil.
Not even WE could begin to fathom how successful The Purge was going to be this weekend. With little to no competition, we saw Universal’s $3 million indie horror flick earn a little over TWELVE times its budget. It did have a marketing budget of $20+ million, which
Swing! And a miss…
led to its great weekend numbers. The U.S. numbers were on top the film of making half of its budget internationally before even opening here. Universal also picked a great weekend to open a low budget horror film. But wait! There’s more good news for you Universal shareholders this weekend, as Team NO2 managed to speed into 2nd place this weekend! Despite early indicators that Now You See Me would overtake it with this weekend’s grosses, Fast and Furious 6 managed to hold on to a second slot finish by roughly $300,000. It was also one of two films to cross the $200 million mark this weekend, which is another feather in the cap of series helmer Justin Lin. It’ll be sad to see him go, as this was his last ride in the Fast franchise after coming on board with Tokyo Drift.
It’s not all bad news in movie land, as Jesse Eisenberg and company managed to keep thrilling magic lovers with a healthy third place finish. Again, Now You See Me won’t have legs for long, but small victories are victories nonetheless, and two weeks of light competition have served this film well. Which brings us to what’s probably the biggest disappointment of the weekend: The Internship‘s weak sauce fourth place opening. We raised some reservations on Friday that Vaughn/Wilson wouldn’t be the draw they once were, but we had no clue they’d flop this hard. Then again, when USA Today says that your movie makes even Google look lame, you’ve got a bit of an image problem. We should have a review up soon for The Internship, so stay tuned for further analysis on this film’s charms (or lack thereof).
The rest of the weekend was filled with mostly unsurprising results. Epic kept fifth place as Star Trek Into Darkness sank to sixth place, crossing the $200 million mark after almost a month of release. After Earth and The Hangover Part III continue to circle the drain, as the two biggest bombs of the summer so far duel to see who gets to be king of Rock Crappy Mountain. Surprisingly, Iron Man 3 and The Great Gatsby are still hanging tough in the Top 10, despite our prediction that one (if not both) of those flicks would drop off. Still, this coming weekend should be different as the competition is going to be even stronger (than a powerful locomotive) with a certain Man of Steel making his way on to the scene. We’ll start to see some numbers after the Wal-Mart screening/early public screenings on Thursday night. The only question left for us to answer is HOW big this is going to be. We’ll get to that with our Friday morning #flickstopick segment like we always do.
And that’s going to wrap up last weekend’s box office review for us here at Cocktails and Movies. Another weekend of surprises and predictions will be upon us soon enough, but in the meantime we’ll continue to throw some fresh content your way. Check out our official site, Facebook, and Twitter feeds, as we continue to figure out who’ll crack first after The Internship‘s failure. Our money’s on Vaughn, but you never know in this town. Drink up, folks, time for another round. It’s only Monday after all.
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