Box Office Weekend: Gravity Rises to the Top of the Box Office

Receiving almost universal praise and a strong start to boot, director Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity took no prisoners with its estimated $55.6 million start. While it has a ways to go before it makes back its $100 million costs, it easily toppled last week’s favorite, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, which made an estimated $21.5 million…not much of a drop from the previous week, all things considered, and as the only family friendly movie in the top ten this week, it is likely to end up profitable. It is certainly doing a far sight better than Runner Runner, which did not encountered poor reviews but a poor box office start. With only an estimated $7.6 million against its $30 million costs, the action thriller looks to lose out big despite its A-list cast.

Prisoners broke into the black with an estimated $5.7 million for its third week in the box office, and appears to be on track for a modest profit overall. Rush, on the other hand, despite great praise is reliant on its foreign box office to keep it going; with an estimated $4.4 million in domestic weekend take (and $18.1 million against $38 million in costs), the most it is likely to generate in the U.S. is Oscar buzz. Meanwhile, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut, Don Jon, stayed in sixth place despite making less than half of what it did last week (estimated $4.2 million), but it has already made almost three times its costs and proven itself a rousing success on its own terms.

Baggage Claim fell below Don Jon for its second week both in weekend take (estimated $4.1 million) and overall earnings ($15.1 million to $16.1 million), though whether it is a box office success or failure is clouded in its lack of budget information. A lack of released budget info also clouds the success or failure of Pulling Strings (estimated $2.5 million) and Enough Said (estimated $2.1 million). Pulling Strings, a romantic comedy about a mariachi player and the diplomat who denied him a work visa, debuted this week to low numbers, while Enough Said, starring the late James Gandolfini, appeared in limited release three weeks ago, adding only a few hundred theaters this weekend. Both sit below the rousing success of the critically panned Insidious: Chapter 2, which only made an estimated $3.9 million this weekend but has raked in $74.8 million on a $6 million budget.

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Seth Paul

When not failing to write novels and screenplays, box-office guru Seth writes humorous comedy tracks for films under the name "The One Man Band" that can be found at Rifftrax.com. Although, he has recently succeeded in writing the novella "Jack Alan and the Case of the Not-Exactly Rocket Scientists," available as an eBook on Amazon. He is also the English voice of Zak in "Zak McKracken: Between Time and Space."

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