The Super Bowl weekend is typically one of the slowest weekends of the year at the box office, with everyone staying home to watch the game and only a couple of token counterprogramming releases put out for people who don’t want to watch the game (typically aimed at women). This weekend was no different, with only one film topping $10 million for the weekend and the rest of the chart remaining fairly unchanged, with the exception of two new releases that did modest but unremarkable business.
Ride Along became the first movie of the year to take three weekends in a row at the number 1 slot, easily topping the chart with $12.3 million and bringing its cumulative total to $93 million. It’s a big success for Kevin Hart, making it the highest grossing film he’s starred in to date, and it might help propel the About Last Night remake, which he costars in, to success on Valentine’s Day. In second place was Frozen, which rose two spots in the top 10 to take $9.3 million, boosted by sing-along showings and a lack of competition. Frozen currently sits at $360 million, the highest grossing Disney Animation Studios film by nearly $160 million.
The two newcomers to the charts were That Awkward Moment and Labor Day, a comedy and a drama aimed primarily at female audiences, and both earned about as expected. That Awkward Moment took third place with $9 million, putting it over its $8 million budget despite being a very low opening for Zac Efron. The audience was primarily female, and it’s likely the film won’t have much of a hold in the coming weeks. Jason Reitman’s new film Labor Day, which opened to mixed reviews after a failed Oscar campaign, came in at seventh with $5.3 million, a higher opening than usual for a Reitman film but a disappointment given that it was a wider release than his other titles. It will likely have a steeper falloff as well, with both films making a seasonally appropriate $15-25 million.
Source: BoxOfficeMojo
