Unless you’re a major shareholder of Disney or Universal or the like, you have no real stake in weekend box office reports, which should honestly be the province of the business papers rather than entertainment outfits such as this one. The only real justification for following box office news is the horse-race aspect: You want the movies you like to succeed, thus encouraging more like them, and the movies you hate to fail, thus encouraging fewer like them. To stretch the horse-race metaphor to the breaking point, this week’s widely derided openers came up lame and had to be put down on the track—though horse euthanization isn’t usually done to the roar of the crowd. Despite a successful run on Broadway, the previous success of Adam Shankman’s Hairspray adaptation, and another of Tom Cruise’s gimmick supporting performances, Rock Of Ages sputtered into a third-place opening, taking $15.1 million, less than half of Madagascar 3’s second-week total. News was equally dire for Adam Sandler, who finally lost his audience with That’s My Boy, perhaps in the wake of last year’s notorious Razzie two-step of Just Go With It and Jack And Jill. It’s also possible that its “R” rating lost some of the juveniles that might appreciate its juvenile humor. Incredibly, That’s My Boy cost $70 million, so the $13 million opening-weekend haul, good enough for fifth place, doesn’t make much of a dent.
In limited release, Your Sister’s Sister, director Lynn Shelton’s follow-up to Humpday, enjoyed a moderately successful start, with $9,000 per screen on 13 screens. (Moonrise Kingdom, now in its fourth week, continues to lead all comers in per screen average with $12,253. It probably can only expand so far before that number drop precipitously, but the slow roll out is clearly paying off.) Other indies had a much harder time, including the middling Ethan Hawke/Pawel Pawlikowski literary thriller The Woman In The Fifth, which opened to $4,111 per screen on nine screens and the acclaimed documentary Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present, which brought in $5,500 per screen on two screens.
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.