Fun Fact before we get started: Looking at some of the yearly breakdowns and getting off on tangents, can you guys even believe that in 2000 the average movie ticket price was just over five bucks? As that was the average, just image how many people were paying less than five dollars for a movie ticket. I feel like I don't remember this ever happening in my lifetime. More than anything though, I just can't believe how long ago 2000 was now. 13 years. That's a high school student. How did that happen?
Anyway, full weekend box office numbers after the break.
We'll start with "Oz the Great and Powerful" as it was the only film this weekend that did anything that mattered. It opened with $80MM domestically and added another $70MM internationally resulting in a strong $150MM opening worldwide. The film has received mixed reviews so far, but ones that generally lean to the favorable end. It's rockin' a scary $215MM budget, but it surely eased most of Disney's worries with this strong opening. As mentioned in the intro, this film will be most closely compared with Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland", which not only released on the same weekend two years ago, but was also released by the same studio. It's clear that very similar approaches were taken with both films, and Disney is surely hoping for similar results in this follow-up. As far as opening weekends go, Alice took the cake collecting more than $115MM in its first weekend (domestic). It ended up with more than $1BB worldwide, so even if Oz comes a little short of those numbers as well, if it's in the same ballpark - which it seems it will be - we can probably expect to see another film revamped in a similar style a few years from now.
Not surprisingly, Oz so far has the best opening for any film of 2013, but ranks #3 on the list of top March Openings. The aforementioned "Alice in Wonderland" ranks one spot ahead of it, with last year's "The Hunger Games" holding the top spot ($152MM).
After Oz, the totals drop significantly, with last weekend's "Jack the Giant Slayer" dropping 63% and barely grabbing $10MM. That now makes for $43.8MM domestically and another $22.6MM internationally for a worldwide total of just over $66MM. Now, after the biggest and most important first ten days for a film to make the majority of its money, "Jack the Giant Slayer" has made almost exactly one-third of its total budget ($195MM). Considering that that's factoring the international numbers as well, that's not good. I said last week that this weekend would decide the fate of this film; I'm not convinced that this will ever hit $100MM worldwide. The film looked terrible and deserved to flop, but I do feel bad for director Bryan Singer. Why, Bryan?
Third place this weekend went to "Identity Thief", which continues to be strong, even through six weeks now. It made $6.3MM this weekend, bringing its domestic totals up to $116.5MM. On the flip-side of the film just above, with a budget of $35MM, "Identity Thief" has already more than tripled its budget. This obviously was a huge success for the studio, even though the film received pretty terrible reviews.
Fourth went to the other wide new release this weekend, "Dead Man Down". The film made $5.3MM, even though it starred such actors as Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace, Terrence Howard, and Dominic Cooper. No budget is listed for the film, but I've seen a figure of $30MM floating around a few different places. If that's accurate, that's quite a bit higher than I expected and very unfortunate for a film that made only $5MM in its opening weekend. That being said, the film was directed by Niels Arden Oplev, who directed the original "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo". The Swedish-made film went to gross nearly $100MM internationally, and, while there was no international opening for "Dead Man Down" this weekend, if fans of Oplev's Dragon Tattoo film want to continue support him and the star of the original film, most of the $30MM budget could be made up rather quickly. We will have to see what the next couple of weeks hold.
Rounding out the top five was "Snitch", which grabbed $5.1MM this weekend. It's now made just over $31MM in three weeks, though that's all been on the domestic side of things; we've seen no international numbers as of yet. No official budget was listed for the film, but I can't imagine it would have been anything higher than $30MM. While uninspiring, this one at least seems in a safe place.
Outside of the top five I don't see much worth note. "Silver Linings Playbook" crossed the $120MM mark with its $3MM gross this weekend, if you want to say that's a thing. "Life of Pi" is now only $1MM away from $600MM worldwide, and, while it's not in the Top 15 anymore, "Django Unchained" crossed the $400MM mark worldwide with its totals this weekend. Also, while it's floundered in the States every step of the way, "A Good Day to Die Hard" has now made more than $240MM worldwide.
That's really all I see though. Check out the full numbers below, courtesy of Box Office Mojo:
