Weekend Wrap-Up

By David Mumpower

April 27, 2014

And now we do the dance of joy.

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In the immortal words of Ray Parker Jr., audiences fell in love with The Other Woman this weekend. Specifically, they fell in love with three women blessed with the beauty of Kate Upton and Cameron Diaz and the personality of Leslie Mann (or some combination therein). The three charismatic leads proved to be a stronger draw than the defending champion the last three weeks, Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Yes, The Other Woman is the box office champion of North America this weekend. It grossed $24.7 million from 3,205 locations, a respectable per-location average of $7,707. After starting out on Friday with $9.3 million, The Other Woman's weekend finished smack dab in the middle of the female-targeted barometers we mentioned in yesterday's box office analysis, Sex and the City and Bridesmaids. Whereas Sex and the City had a mad rush on Friday night, leading to only a 2.1 multiplier, Bridesmaids was able to pull in a 3.35 multiplier (weekend box office divided by Friday box office).

By comparison, The Other Woman's Friday-to-Sunday multiplier was a 2.65, indicating that there was less rush to see it right away, but that it lacks the enthusiastic word-of-mouth of Bridesmaids. The proof of this statement lies in both critical and audience reaction to the film. At Rotten Tomatoes, The Other Woman was the worst(!) reviewed of the three new releases with only a 25% fresh rating. Its Cinemascore is a B+, which is actually a somewhat lukewarm response (for comparison, The Monuments Men, Need for Speed and Muppets Most Wanted also came in with a B+).




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Still, with a dearth of recent films truly aimed at females and yet another superhero movie as our lone new release next weekend, The Other Woman stands to continue as a viable alternative for women who are tired of watching yet another costumed crusader saving the world. The production budget on this Nick Cassavetes-directed film was a relatively slight $40 million, so it should be a decently profitable venture for Fox even before ancillary home video revenues are factored in.

Winning three straight weekends of domestic box office has become a rare achievement in the industry. As such, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, like The Lego Movie before it, is an unqualified success story. A fourth weekend as box office ruler would have given the Marvel release bragging rights over its toy story opponent as the two battle for supremacy as the biggest film of 2014 to date. That victory proved elusive as The Winter Soldier fell 37% to $16 million this weekend, sliding to second place in the process. After only 24 days in theaters, the latest Disney comic book movie has already grossed $224.9 million domestically. With $645 million in the bank worldwide, it has surpassed Thor: The Dark World and Iron Man 2 to become the second most popular standalone title featuring an Avengers character.

Heaven Is for Real continued its run of box office positivity. The religiously themed title grossed $13.8 million this weekend, a respectable 39% drop. I would also note that its box office last Sunday was $6.4 million, enough to make it the number one movie in North America on that day. This tidbit is important because there was an Easter bump for the project that inflated its opening weekend total. As such, its weekly decline is even better once we remove the Easter boost. Heaven Is for Real is definitely not a one week wonder. Its current box office of $51.9 million against a $12 million financial outlay is already extremely impressive, and there is still room to grow.


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