New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Two new titles debuted in theaters this past weekend. Their impact on the weekday box office charts is minimal compared to new releases from the past couple of weekends. To that point, the number one film in America for the last three days is not Think Like a Man Too, despite what you may have heard.

After debuting in first place on Friday with a heady $12.2 million, the sequel fell to second place on Saturday with $10.3 million, a drop of 15%. Sequels can see that sort of Friday-to-Saturday plummet. This particular title held just okay on Sunday, falling another 35% to $6.8 million. So, the project lost 44% of its audience just from Friday-to-Sunday. Worst of all, How to Train Your Dragon 2 was already beating it by day three, meaning that the strongest new release this week is already down to third place at the box office. It’s going to be that kind of week.

Monday’s box office confirmed that thought process. The number one movie in North America for the ninth time in 11 days is 22 Jump Street. Exiting a weekend where it fell a respectable 52% to $27.5 million, the Channing Tatum/Jonah Hill comedy basically repeated its rate of decline yesterday. Its winning Monday take of $3.6 million represents a 47% fall from last Monday’s $6.8 million. Slow and steady is winning the race in this instance as the cinematic adaptation of the Fox series has a running total of $113.5 million. The first film grossed $138.4 million during its entire domestic run while also needing 28 days to reach its sequel’s current take. 22 Jump Street is full of win.

The most enigmatic movie in release at the moment continued to puzzle yesterday. How to Train Your Dragon 2 fell a stiffer than expected 50% over the weekend. Before anyone tries to ding me for praising 22 Jump Street for the same performance, please consider the target audiences. Families generally provide a huge boost to the legs of animated movies. Conversely, comedies targeting the under-25 crowd tend to die quickly, at least historically. The 21 Jump Street franchise and Neighbors are demonstrating abnormal behavior in this regard. That irregularity does not change the fact that How to Train Your Dragon 2 should have claimed a sub-50% drop.

On Monday, the movie featuring my beloved Toothless earned $3.1 million. While we are already discussing a sub-$15 million set of weekdays, this news is actually good. In terms of Monday-to-Monday holdover, the DreamWorks Animation production did quite well. It fell only 38%, which is more in line with family film behavior as well as summer weekday box office behavior. Still, if you have told me two weeks ago that this particular movie would not have hit $100 million after 11 days in theaters, I would have laughed in your (virtual) face. Its current take of $97.7 million is simply too low for a follow-up to such a brilliant movie as the original.

Continued:       1       2