CinemaNerdz

Weekend Box-Office: Avengers on Top Again, Casts Long Shadow Over Johnny Depp and Dark Shadows

Seth Paul

The Avengers stood quite tall once again this weekend…still losing quite a bit of revenue from last week, but when last week’s haul ended up being well over $200 million ($207.4 million to be exact), an estimated $103.2 million this week is quite the success story. It also is the fastest film to reach $350 million, earning over $373.1 million in domestic ticket sales. However, it did not beat the record-setting pace of Avatar and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 to $1 billion worldwide in 19 days…it merely tied them.

Two debuts this week made it into the Top Ten, but the one most likely to provide competition for The Avengers barely made a blip. Dark Shadows opened to mixed to poor reviews, and any other week its estimated $28.8 million earnings would seem decent, but on a whopping $150 million budget, the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp comedy seems destined to sputter out before it can make much headway at the box office, especially sandwiched as it is between The Avengers and Battleship. Still, it cast its own little shadow over the rest of the cinematic outings, with third place finisher Think Like a Man gaining only single digits again with an estimated $6.3 million, but has still done quite well for a romantic comedy with $81.9 million in the bank. The Hunger Games, though a long way from its opening weekend, still sits at a respectable fourth place on the charts with an estimated $4.4 million. It remains ahead in total domestic earnings against The Avengers, but its $386.9 million also covers eight weeks in the box office, and though it will be surpassed, it has still proven a smash success, and should continue to draw audiences for some time yet.

The Lucky One picked up an estimated $4.1 million, the romantic drama is a modest success for a movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel (about $30 million shy of his biggest movie outing The Notebook), but much more of a success compared to The Pirates! Band of Misfits, which continues its misfire in its domestic outing, earning an estimated $3.2 million and a mere $23 million in domestic take. It is Aardman’s most disappointing film from a box office standpoint, despite being better received than Flushed Away, the company’s first film to use CG instead of their traditional stop-motion animation.

The Five-Year Engagement also continues a struggle for success, its estimated $3.1 million this weekend and $24.4 million domestic gross against a $30 million budget not boding too well for it to be more than a mild success at best. However, there was a big boost for the romantic comedy The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which earned an estimated $2.7 million…not a lot when compared to the others on this list, but for a film showing in only 178 theaters (up from 27 last week), it is a strong second week performance, though like The Pirates! Band of Misfits is bolstered by much better foreign than domestic box office.

Bringing up the bottom, Chimpanzee holds its own once again, staying in ninth place with an estimated $1.6 million, the documentary doing remarkably well, only behind March of the Penguins and DisneyNature’s own Earth in terms of success for a nature-based documentary (a total domestic gross of $25.6 million). It held off the independent Lionsgate release of Girl in Progress, which debuted with an estimated $1.4 million and a host of mixed to negative reviews (and about twice as many theaters as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel).

Weekend Box-Office (May 11th – May 13th)

  1. The Avengers…$103.2 million
  2. Dark Shadows…$28.8 million
  3. Think Like a Man…$6.3 million
  4. The Hunger Games…$4.4 million
  5. The Lucky One…$4.1 million
  6. The Pirates! Band of Misfits…$3.2 million
  7. The Five-Year Engagement…$3.1 million
  8. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel…$2.7 million
  9. Chimpanzee…$1.6 million
  10. Girl in Progress…$1.4 million

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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