erik lundegaard

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Sunday March 29, 2015

Weekend Box Office: Moviegoers Want to Go 'Home'

weekend box office: March 29, 2015

Things on heads: a theme.

So is Lionsgate/Summit still going to split the final “Divergent” book into two parts, a la “Harry Potter” and “Twilight”? Because at least those movies were blockbusters. Most of the “Twilight” movies grossed between $400 and $800 worldwide, while the “Harry Potter” movies all grossed between $800 million and $1.3 billion worldwide. That last figure was for “Deathly Hallows Part 2”; and since “Deathly Hallows Part 1” also grossed $960 million worldwide, splitting the final book into two movies meant an extra billion smackers. Hardly chump change. Expecto Dollarum.

“Divergent”? More like Expecto doldrums. The studio, I’m sure, hoped for a “Hunger Games,” but the first movie only did $150 domestic, $137 foreign. The second, “Insurgent,” is doing worse domestically. It opened to $52 last weekend, then dropped 58% this weekend to $22. So after two weekends it’s at $86 as opposed to $94 for the first. Will there really be a clammer for an elongated version of the final lame book? I can’t imagine it.

The second weekend of “Insurgent” was the No. 3 movie this weekend, after two poorly reviewed movies, the animated “Home” (48% on RT) and the comedic “Get Hard” (32%), opened at $54 and $34 million, respectively. The latter is the third-best live-action opening of Will Ferrell’s career and the third-best of Kevin Hart’s career. So teaming them has at least made financial sense. Don’t know much about “Home,” other than the ad could read: “From the writers of ‘Get Smart,’ the director of ‘Sinbad: The Legend of the Seven Seas,’ and from the studio that brought you ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakel.’”

The rest of the top 10 includes the third weekend of “Cinderella” (now at $150 domestic, $280 worldwide), the fourth weekeend of “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” ($28 domestic, $62 worldwide) and the seventh weekend of “Kingsman” ($119 domestic, $302 worldwide).

Next weekend we get the seventh installment of “Fast and Furious,” called “Furious 7,” which star Vin Diesel thinks should win an Academy Award for best picture. Because he’s Vin Diesel. 

Posted at 09:23 AM on Sunday March 29, 2015 in category Movies - Box Office