Weekend Box Office Report: February 20-22 2015

By Kip Mooney • On • In News News 0

BOX OFFICE REPORT 

February 20-22, 2015(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

TOP 51. Fifty Shades of Grey (23.2 million)2. Kingsman ($17.5 million)3. The SpongeBob Movie ($15.5 million)4. McFarland, USA ($11.3 million)5. The DUFF ($11.0 million)

Like a relationship on the skids, the second weekend of Fifty Shades of Grey was a big disappointment. Slipping nearly 73 percent, the film suffered the biggest drop for a No. 1 opening since the remake of Friday the 13th (2009). It held on to the top spot, but not impressively. I guess you could say the passion had gone out of audiences.

Kingman: The Secret Service stayed at No. 2. It still made less, but is ticking right along, and given its slower decline, could still become the third movie of 2015 to top $100 million. Besides Fifty Shades, the only other movie to do that is No. 3, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge out of Water. It made $15.5 million in its third week, which is a pretty astonishing hold for an animated movie that's not from Pixar.

In a close race (pun intended again), the inspirational cross-country running movie McFarland, USA beat out teen romantic comedy The DUFF for the final two spots. The former is yet another weak opening for Kevin Costner's comeback. He hasn't had a movie where he's the lead open with more than $15 million since his Coast Guard drama The Guardian back in 2006. Meanwhile, The DUFF, despite its queasy premise (Mae Whitman plays "the Designated Ugly Fat Friend"), got decent reviews and is bound to become a hit on home video.

Outside the top 5: - This Weekend's Indie Champ: Wild Tales, Argentina's official entry at the Academy Awards, boasted an average of $21,275 on only four screens.

- Interstellar saw a 15 percent jump this week, thanks to jumping on some IMAX screens for a limited time with additional footage. It's now made $187 million, which is still Christopher Nolan's lowest-grossing film since The Prestige in 2006.

- Your final Best Picture nominees and how much money they've made: American Sniper ($319.6 million), The Imitation Game ($83.9 million), The Grand Budapest Hotel ($59.1 million), Selma ($49.5 million), Birdman ($37.7 million), The Theory of Everything ($34.1 million), Boyhood ($25.2 million), Whiplash ($11.3 million).

Next week: Will Smith tries something different"¦ again. His con man drama Focus could be his ticket back to the A-list. I think there's enough curiosity to get it to No. 1 with a very minor $18 million. Then again, audiences do love horror, so don't be surprised if The Lazarus Effect sneaks in to the top spot. Of course, it does star Olivia Wilde, who has one of the worst track records of any actress in Hollywood right now. Let's say they cancel each other out and Focus takes the lead.

Facebooktwitterredditmail

About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

Leave a Reply