Weekend Box Office Report: October 17-19 2014

By Kip Mooney • On • In News News 0

 

BOX OFFICE REPORT 

October 17-19, 2014(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

TOP 51. Fury ($23.5 million)2. Gone Girl ($17.8 million)3. Book of Life ($17.0 million)4. Alexander and the... ($12.0 million)5. The Best of Me  ($10.2 million)

It took a tank to remove Gone Girl from the top spot. David Ayer's WWII drama Fury was the biggest movie of the weekend with an estimated $23.5 million. The Brad Pitt-led ensemble rode a very strong, macho campaign to the lead, confidently beating its competition by a wide margin. Still, Gone Girl fell a small amount again, crossing the $100 million mark.

The Book of Life, the Dia de los Muertos animated film from relatively new animation studio Reel FX, did slightly better with their second effort. $17 million was better than last year's Free Birds, but wasn't enough to pass Gone Girl. And it was certainly better than its familial competition in Alexander ($12 million) and the Nicholas Sparks sap-fest The Best of Me ($10.2 million).

Speaking of the latter, that's actually the worst opening for the author's romantic dramas. Even the bonkers Safe Haven and the lusty Lucky One doubled the opening of this latest, starring James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan as high-school sweethearts who reunite 20 years later. Maybe we'll get a reprieve from these dull, repetitive flicks?

Outside the top 5: - This Weekend's Indie Champ: Birdman, Michael Keaton's big comeback vehicle, averaged $103,750 on each of its four screens. That's huge, but even more important for a stat we'll get to later.

- Dear White People, Justin Simien's razor-sharp racial satire, also had an astounding opening. It averaged $31,273 on its 11 screens.

- Both of those films did better than Men, Women & Children, which played on 608 screens. In fact, it averaged only $526, which is terrible no matter how you spin it. Here are some other movies that had a better average than that on far fewer screens: Whiplash ($10,048 on 21 screens), The Tale of the Princess Kaguya ($17,233 on three screens), Listen Up Philip ($12,150 on two screens) and God the Father ($15,000 on one screen). Ouch.

Next week: Keanu Reeves stars as John Wick, a retired hitman who goes on a revenge mission against the people who killed his puppy (no, seriously). I think it really could be No. 1 with $18 million. I can only hope it does better than the insultingly stupid Ouija, another PG-13 horror movie and another movie based on a kids' toy.

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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.

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