Unfortunately the last 2 years have not been too good for The Expendables (and we could say the same about some of its stars), with the sequel losing quite a few millions compared to the original. But it’s not all bad news as you’ll see after the break.
There is light at the end of this tunnel and it might just shine brighter than it did for the 2010 The Expendables. See that film opened with $34.8 million and the sequel only did $28.6 million this past weekend. What bodes well for The Expendables 2 is the smaller Saturday drop (2.7% versus 10.7% for the original) which could be a sign of superior word of mouth that might lead to a better total in the end. For now we’ll just have to wait and see how next week looks. Now in case you were wondering, The Expendables dropped 51.3% to $16.9 million in its 2nd weekend, so The Expendables 2 should be in the 40-45% region if it wants to recover some ground, although I must admit, 40% does sound a bit far-fetched for this type of movie.
In 2nd place The Bourne Legacy had an all-time low 55.3% drop for the series with $17 million. After 10 days the spin-off has $69.6 million which places it above The Bourne Identity ($54.3 million) for now, but well below The Bourne Supremacy ($98.8 million) and The Bourne Ultimatum ($164.7 million). In the grand scheme of things The Bourne Legacy should finish above $100 million and thanks to international numbers; bring in an ok profit for Universal. Just don’t expect to see Jeremy Renner in another Bourne film all by himself anytime soon.
ParaNorman opened in 3rd place with $14 million, the 4th biggest opening for a stop-motion animation. Unfortunately that’s not saying much since stop-motion is just about dead today, at least compared to CG animation. The benchmark for ParaNorman was Coraline ($16.8 million opening) and having failed to meet said goal, I just can’t shake a certain feeling of disappointment. Look, I love stop-motion, I really do, and I was hoping ParaNorman (as well as Toys in the Attic and Frankeweenie in the coming weeks) would bring back this wonderful technique. Hopefully the film will have Coraline-type legs at the box office and pull at least $50-60 million in North America.
The Campaign was 4th, down 50.6% for $13.1 million and a 10-day total of $51.4 million. Very good results here so far and I must say I wasn’t expecting this much already for a political comedy.
Sparkle rounds out the top 5 with an $11.6 million opening. Damn it, with the exception of Bourne I over-predicted everything this weekend.
In 6th place The Dark Knight Rises continues to keep Gotham City safe, down a decent 42% with $11 million and a total of $409.7 million. On Friday (29th day) this became the 4th fastest film to ever hit $400 million. Only Avatar (23 days), The Dark Knight (18 days) and The Avengers (14 days) got there faster.
The Odd Life of Timothy Green opened in 7th place with a $10.8 million weekend for a 5-day total of $15.1 million.
