Weekend Box Office: Inexplicable failure to cast Cynthia Rothrock leads The Expendables 2 to a soft #1 

Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris, Dolph Lundgren, and other ancient avengers assembled for The Expendables 2, a sequel to the ‘80s action throwback that got people mildly excited a couple of summers ago. People were even more mild in their excitement this time around—borderline tepid, in fact—but in the ides of August, that was still enough to drag its creaky old bones over the finish line in first with $28.75 million, a few million off the original movie’s opening weekend. Time will tell whether the film earns enough to give Stallone and company another sequel, but the reservoir of surefire ‘80s action stars runs deep: Cynthia Rothrock, Louis Gossett, Jr., Brian Bosworth, and Don “The Dragon” Wilson just for starters. In non-sequel news, the 3-D animated Paranorman had a relatively soft open at #3 with $14 million, about $3 million short of the comparable Coraline and without the robust critical support that might give it staying power. Whitney Houston’s last film, Sparkle, bowed at #5 with $12 million, which isn’t a bad number against a $14 million budget and a fan base that should give it a decent afterlife. That left the event movie of the summer, The Odd Life Of Timothy Green to hobble through at #7 with $11 million over the weekend, though its Wednesday open, slated to appease the rabid Joel Edgerton fanbase, nudged the total up to a respectable $15.2 million.

In limited release, Robert Pattinson’s star presence gave a small boost to David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis—and likely did a number on extreme Pattinson devotees. At $24,100 per screen on three screens, it had the highest per screen average of any movie in current release. Compliance took advantage of its controversial rep coming out of Sundance, bringing in $16,000 on one screen.

For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.