Box Office Weekend: The Family Can’t Whack Insidious Chapter 2

Unlike Lee Daniels’ The Butler, Riddick will not be enjoying three weeks at the top of the box office. In only its second week, the Vin Diesel sci-fi thriller got knocked to third place with an estimated $7 million. In its place, Insidious Chapter 2 rallied the box office to spooky effect, bringing in an estimated $41.1 million. Even with critics claiming it is nowhere near as effective as the original, it proved more than effective enough to blow past its $5 million production costs. Second place went to the darkly themed comedy The Family. Its debut is much closer to the Riddick debut of last week with an estimated $14.5 million and a $30 million budget to make back (Riddick is still a few million shy of making back its $38 million).

Lee Daniels’ The Butler remained a strong draw for its fifth week, picking up an estimated $5.6 million and surpassing the $100 million mark in domestic gross. It still has a way to go before it can capture We’re the Millers; with an estimated $5.4 million and an extra week at the box office, it too remains a crowd favorite and has earned a domestic total of $131.6 million.

Instructions Not Included (estimated $4.3 million) has managed to bring in $26.6 million so far, though the indie film refuses to officially release its production numbers. If rumors are to be believed and it is a similar $5 million to Insidious Chapter 2, it is a financial success on its own merits. So, too, is the similar box office of One Direction: This is Us, but the concert film dropped to eighth place with an estimated $2.4 million, showing a distinct lack of box office draw after its debut. Planes landed neatly in-between with an estimated $3.1 million, doing moderate business but still lacking the critical and financial acclaim of other Disney ventures. Still, it has performed better domestically than Turbo and Smurfs 2, though Smurfs 2 did better than either film outside of the U.S.

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Speaking of better overseas performance, Elysium came in ninth with an estimated $2.1 million, and while it failed to make back its money here, it pulled in a grand worldwide total of $232.4 million, ensuring it at least modest success if not great acclaim. It finally pairs up with similarly boated Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters at long last, the children’s action film earning an estimated $1.8 million and little chance of making its $90 million costs back domestically, though it has done decent business ($164.6 million) worldwide.

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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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