Hard to decide which was the bigger news this weekend: That Kick-Ass, despite a wave of publicity and fanboy excitement, couldn’t quite hold onto first place, or that the film that beat it, the animated hit How To Train Your Dragon, has clawed back to #1 on its fourth week of release. Whichever way your slice it, How To Train Your Dragon eked out a win with $20 million to Kick-Ass’ $19.7 million, showing the remarkable staying power that’s kept its going strong past its relatively modest opening weekend numbers. (Modest in comparison with DreamWorks’ last effort, Monsters Vs. Aliens, anyway.) For its part, Kick-Ass doesn’t have that high a budgetary mountain to climb, but expectations were greater for the pre-summer superhero movie, which drew wildly polarized reviews from critics and fell short of the hype generated by Ain’t It Cool News’ “Buttnumbathon” screening. The week’s other wide release, Neil LaBute’s remake of the three-year-old sleeper hit Death At A Funeral, bowed in fourth with a very healthy $17 million in relation to its frugal budget. As Nathan Rabin wrote in his review, we can look forward to the Hispanic remake in 2013.
In limited release, the David Duchovny-Demi Moore satire The Joneses and the family-friendly baseball movie The Perfect Game both opened poorly, taking $2870 and $1185 per screen respectively. Other arthouse titles fared much better, including the Oscar-winning Argentinean thriller The Secret In Their Eyes ($17,600 per screen), the critically acclaimed Banksy documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop ($20,750 per screen), and James Ivory’s latest literary adaptation, The City Of Your Final Destination ($22,000 per screen).
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.