BOX OFFICE REPORT July 25-27, 2014(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)
TOP 51. Lucy ($44.0 million)2. Hercules ($29.0 million)3. Dawn of the Planet... ($16.4 million)4. The Purge: Anarchy ($9.8 million)5. Planes: Fire & Rescue ($9.3 million)
And now we come to the best evidence disputing Hollywood's stance that women can't headline big movies. Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson as a drug mule who accidentally becomes a superheroine, destroyed the competition. It made an estimated $44 million, which is far better than other action/sci-fi films with bona fide male leads. Yes, that's better than Tom Cruise's Edge of Tomorrow and Matt Damon's Elysium.
It's also better than the latest version of Hercules, this one starring The Rock. Sure, $29 million isn't terrible, but when a major studio gets its butt kicked by a tiny European import, that's embarrassing. At least Paramount can take some consolation in knowing that it did far better than The Legend of Hercules, which also cost a ton, but only finished with $18.8 million.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes finally surpassed its predecessor and went into the black, while The Purge: Anarchy did its expected nose-dive, even though it's now made more than five times its budget. And Planes: Fire & Rescue dropped, but will stick around until it's time for the kids to go back to school.
Outside the top 5: - This Weekend's Indie Champ: Magic in the Moonlight, the latest trifle from Woody Allen, averaged $25,059 on only 17 screens.
- And so it was written: Transformers: Age of Extinction is the No. 1 movie of the summer, having taken in $236 million so far. It's almost at a billion worldwide. Hope you're happy with yourselves.
- Romantic comedy And So It Goes, spy thriller A Most Wanted Man and Gabriel Iglesias's stand-up performance The Fluffy Movie also opened, but none of them really made an impression. They all opened on more than 350 screens, but made less than $5 million each.
Next week: Guardians of the Galaxy will be No. 1. It's based on a Marvel comic book but doesn't feature any of their popular characters. So it's going to debut anywhere between $70 and $100 million. But it's going to be big, and it's going to rule for most of the rest of the summer. Anything else opening will just be space dust.
