After three weeks in the top spot, Gravity lost its place to the indomitable Jackass franchise. Their latest offering, Bad Grandpa, racked up $32 million, showing that 11 years after the premiere of the original film, there is still a market for dirty jokes and pranks on unsuspecting individuals. Grandpa marks the second highest opening weekend for a Jackass film, with the 3-D third installment ahead of it at $50 million. With the previous films in the franchise grossing $64 million, $72 million and $117 million, respectively, and with the 40-50% drop-offs each film had in their second weekends, Grandpa should settle into a respectable gross (no pun intended) in the same range as the first two films, seeing as it lacks the 3-D bump to push it over the edge.
The two other big openings of the weekend, The Counselor and the larger expansion of 12 Years A Slave, were a much different story. Despite a $25 million budget, a fairly low amount for its star pedigree, The Counselor bombed in fourth place with $8 million. It got a rare D grade from Cinemascore and lost some 40 percent of its audience between Friday and Sunday, suggesting toxic word of mouth. Meanwhile, in the week before its wide general release, 12 Years A Slave added over 100 theaters and $2.1 million to its gross for an eighth place finish and a $17,480 per-theater average. It’s still putting up good numbers, but next week’s wide release will tell if it’s simply a festival/art house hit or a film with mass appeal.
The rest of the box office was fairly predictable as we head into the beginning of the holiday/Oscar season. Gravity fell to second place with $20.3 million and is just shy of the $200 million mark domestically. Captain Phillips was in third with $11.8 million and a total of $70 million, putting it firmly in the black. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 rounded out the top 5 with $6.1 million, also a modest fall hit. And Carrie lost 63 percent of its first weekend audience and made $5.9 million in sixth place, putting it at $26 million against a $30 million budget, which it should easily make with the Halloween holiday this Thursday.
Source: BoxOfficeMojo
