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Well, it's official: "21 Jump Street" is a hit. Not only did this film set an opening-weekend record, but it also garnered rave reviews and now looks to be a solid player for the next few weeks at least, even with the upcoming "The Hunger Games" and "Wrath of the Titans".
Otherwise, "The Lorax" continued its impressive, albeit surprising, box office run; and "John Carter" took a huge nosedive in only its second week.
Check the full numbers and analysis after the break.
As I mentioned above, "21 Jump Street" set a box office record this weekend. There are a lot of requisites for it, but nonetheless, it set the opening weekend mark for an R-rated comedy releasing outside of the summer months. Like I said, it seems like a lot of hoops to jump though, and we're more or less creating a record for it, but I'm happy for it. Box Office Mojo reports that Jump Street took in $36.3MM this weekend. Those are very solid number for the type of film this is, and like I mentioned, with the backing from both critics and fans alike, this has the looks of having strong legs.
Coming in right behind Jump Street was Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax". In its third weekend it still managed a very solid $22.7MM. This film has been much stronger than I expected it would be, and even though it's a rare animated film that doesn't have the strong backing by critics, it continues to draw in families all across the country. It's now made a total of $158MM nationally, and just surpassed "Horton Hears a Who!" as the highest grossing animated Dr. Seuss film (out of two...). It would still need about $100MM to catch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and become the highest-grossing Dr. Seuss movie period, but ultimately I expect it will come up a bit short of that. Still, very solid and impressive numbers for this animated film.
"John Carter" came in third place, but had a cringe-worthy 55% drop in only its second week, for a weekend gross of $13MM. That brings its full total to only $53MM, and for a film that had a production budget of around $250MM, and a marketing budget of over $100MM, that's an epic flop. It really is too bad too because this film deserves much better credit than it will ultimately get. It wasn't ground-breaking (really just re-treading a lot of what "Avatar" perfected a few years back), but it was solid.
Otherwise, most other films had pretty expected drops. "Silent House", also only in its second week, had the worst percentage drop of any film in the top 15, dropping 68% and only taking in $2MM and change over the weekend. "Friends With Kids", which was a limited-release last weekend, had the only upswing of any film in the top 15, and with its strong industry support, I'd imagine this one to keep climbing for a while as it expands its theater count.
Check out the full numbers below, courtesy of Box Office Mojo:
