Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s 8th collaboration, Dark Shadows, was no match for Earth’s mightiest heroes, The Avengers. As expected, Hulk and co. smashed some more records this past weekend, fastest film to $300 million in North America and best 2nd weekend being just a few of them.
So by know you might know that The Avengers broke the opening weekend record a good few days ago with $207.4 million. Well, after such a gigantic debut a big drop was to be expected, at least in the 60% range. Previously, out of the top 10 films with the biggest openings, The Dark Knight was the one with the smallest drop in its 2nd weekend, 52.5%. That number was exceptional and very few would have thought The Avengers could beat hat, well it did. The Joss Whedon directed superhero flick made no less than $103 million in its 2nd weekend in theaters, that’s a $50.3% drop, an absolute record for any film that ever opened above $120 million. In just 10 days The Avengers has accumulated $373 million in North America, another record. Right now this is the 18th highest grosser on the all time domestic chart and if it can keep up this pace, $600 million or more will definitely be within reach, and it may even give Titanic ($658.4 million) a run for its money, quite literally. Soon enough it will be time to finally address the elephant in the room (hint: it has to do with two other superhero flicks coming out later this summer).
Elephants aside, Dark Shadows was 2nd with a somewhat underwhelming $29.6 million debut. Lately Johnny Depp seems to not perform as well as he used to at the box office (The Rum Diary), obviously outside of the Pirates franchise, an animated flick that he voiced (Rango) and a cameo in a movie based on an 80′s TV show. This would actually be a decent opening weekend if not for the fact that Dark Shadows apparently cost $150 million to make. Having seen it (and enjoyed), I can’t possibly see where all that money went. With The Avengers rather large shadow and a slew of upcoming flicks over the upcoming weeks, Dark Shadows will have a hard time reaching the $100 million mark, so either the international market saves this, or it loses money.
Think Like a Man ended up in 3rd with $5.8 million for a total of $81.4 million. This surprising flick ended up as the only real standout of April at the box office.
The Hunger Games showed outstanding box office legs again, down just 19.4% for $4.5 million. Overall the film is now at $387 million and should finish very close to $400 million (maybe even pass that mark).
Rounding out the top 5 was The Lucky One with $4.1 million and a total of $53.7 million. This is now the 4th highest grossing Nicholas Sparks adaptation ever in North America.
