Weekend Box Office: The kids <3 Noah Baumbach
The Avengers phenomenon aside, the box office story this summer had been how anemic the grosses have been overall, dragged down by high-profile calamities like Battleship and Dark Shadows, and underachievers like The Dictator. Men In Black 3 and the surprisingly robust Snow White And The Huntsman helped take the summer out of a tailspin, and this week saw two openers that did huge business without one siphoning viewers from another. After battling close to a draw on Friday, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted pulled ahead of Prometheus to win the weekend, taking $60.35 million to the latter film’s $50 million. We’re just going to presume the difference-maker was Noah Baumbach’s screenplay credit, which convinced the more jaded kids to stop defiling library books, pull their fathers away from grad students half their age, and go to the movies instead. Despite the challenges of a hard sci-fi premise, an R-rating, and the repeated endorsement of Stephen A. Smith, Prometheus did remarkably good business, enough to get Box Office Mojo to consider how it ranks among big openers that didn’t win the weekend. (It ranks #4 on the second-best list.)