The holiday weekend is always a bit of a tricky one due to when the weekend actually starts, and this time around it really did begin on Tuesday evening as studios brought out Lone Ranger and Despicable Me 2 for a couple of showings in most theaters. That carried through the rest, so we’ve got a slightly 5 days+ kind of approach to deal with for an opening rather than the usual three days. And it definitely benefited Despicable Me 2 with so many kids out from school and parents with a few days off that could do something with them. THe film brought in $142 million over the frame total, and did $82 million just over the usual three day weekend itself. And that’s on top of another $151 million it made internationally, bringing its opening week to $293 for a sequel to a film from 2010, which is pretty hard to do. It’s pretty much avoided the sophomore curse, at least in terms of the box office.
The other big film of the holiday period and the biggest gamble since last years John Carter is The Lone Ranger. With a whole lot of wrangling prior to production about its budget, and a huge budget at that for a genre that does not play well in general in the US or overseas, it pretty much crashed with a $49 million take over the five day period along with a $24 take overseas in twenty-five markets that it opened in. It’s expected that the film will cross the $100 million mark in the US, largely because the audience that is going to see it is older and tends to not rush out to movies, but it’s essentially considered to be another high profile bomb for this year following After Earth and White House Down. It’s also hopefully going to bring Johnny Depp to a point where he starts making some different choices about his approach to choosing films and roles. His next film is the currently filming Transcendence and he’s also slotted for Into the Woods, which is in pre-production. Of course, there’s also the in development Alice in Wonderland: Into the Looking Glass and the 2015 release of Pirates of the Caribbean 5…
| RANK | TITLE | DISTRIBUTOR NAME | WEEKEND REVENUE | CUME REVENUE | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| REVENUE | # OF LOCATIONS* | LOC AVG | ||||
| 1 | Despicable Me 2 | Universal | $82,518,065 | 3,997 | 20,645 | $142,075,710 |
| 2 | Lone Ranger, The | Disney | $29,432,000 | 3,904 | 7,538 | $48,936,000 |
| 3 | Heat, The | 20th Century Fox | $25,000,000 | 3,184 | 7,851 | $86,398,269 |
| 4 | Monsters University | Disney | $19,590,000 | 3,739 | 5,239 | $216,127,000 |
| 5 | World War Z | Paramount | $18,200,000 | 3,316 | 5,488 | $158,758,078 |
| 6 | White House Down | Sony | $13,500,000 | 3,222 | 4,189 | $50,477,929 |
| 7 | Man Of Steel | Warner Bros. | $11,415,000 | 2,905 | 3,929 | $271,206,000 |
| 8 | Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain | Lionsgate | $10,100,000 | 876 | 11,529 | $17,460,704 |
| 9 | This Is The End | Sony | $5,800,000 | 2,104 | 2,756 | $85,553,914 |
| 10 | Now You See Me | Lionsgate | $2,770,000 | 1,606 | 1,724 | $110,415,412 |
| 11 | Star Trek Into Darkness | Paramount | $1,310,000 | 507 | 2,583 | $223,063,947 |
| 12 | Fast & Furious 6 | Universal | $1,024,220 | 617 | 1,660 | $235,439,330 |
