Thieving magicians made Will Smith’s box office success disappear this weekend, while vehicular warfare stayed strong.
In at number 1 for the second week in a row is Fast & Furious 6 with $34 million. The film has now topped $170 million in domestic grosses, and $480 million worldwide.
The sequel’s massive success internationally, along with strong performances from Oblivion and Identity Thief, has helped push Universal over the $1 billion mark for the year. Furthermore, Fast & Furious 6 is less than $40 million away from surpassing Fast Five as the highest grossing film in the franchise.
Now You See Me (read our review) comes in at number 2 with $28 million. Louis Letterier’s film about bank robbing magicians opened much stronger than analysts expected. Not only that, the film is the highest opening weekend for a Summit Entertainment release not titled Twilight. Even more impressive than a strong opening weekend, though, is the fact Now You See Me topped the number 3 film.
Coming in at number 3 is After Earth (read our review) with a very disappointing $27 million. Will and Jaden Smith’s sci-fi film was looking at a $35+ million opening heading into Friday, but poor word of mouth seemingly hurt the film’s chances at even a decent summer opening.
The presence of one M. Night Shyamalan might have had something to do with the film’s weak box office performance, but considering the marketing focused mostly on the Smith family it’s hard to tell how much. Either way, we’re likely going to be filing After Earth under the “summer flop” category when all is said and done.
There is a tie for the number 4 spot (based on estimates) between Star Trek Into Darkness and Epic with $16.4 million each. Considering animated/family films beat most other films on Sunday, we’re going to list Epic first. Now in its second weekend, Blue Sky Studios’ animated feature is at $65 million domestic and $149 million worldwide.
Star Trek Into Darkness, on the other hand, is up to $181 million in domestic grosses and $328 million worldwide. It’s not far behind the 2009 Star Trek ($257 million domestic, $385 million worldwide) in terms of worldwide grosses, but has a ways to go to catch its domestic total.
The Hangover Part III drops to the number 6 spot this weekend with $15.9 million. Although the sequel has grossed $88 million thus far, it is well behind the first two films, which had cleared $100 million by their second weekend.
Coming in at number 7 is Iron Man 3 with $8 million, which brings its totals up to $384 million domestic and $1.179 billion worldwide. For those of you keeping track, the film is still sitting pretty at number 5 on the all-time grosses list, but it needs some help if it wants to catch Harry Potter 7 Part 2 ($1.341 billion).
The Great Gatsby is the number 8 film with $6 million. 4 weeks and $128 million in domestic grosses later, it’s safe to say Warner Bros. was smart to move the film to summer.
Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani comes in at number 9 with $1.6 million. With a very front-loaded box office, this Bollywood coming of age film was able to sneak into the top 10 thanks to a $10,255 per-screen-average. In India, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani has the fourth biggest opening of all time and the highest for a non-holiday release.
Rounding out the top 10 is Mud with $1.2 million. The film has grossed $16 million over 6 weeks, which is quite good considering it never expanded beyond 960 screens.
______
[NOTE: These are only weekend box office estimates – based on Friday and Saturday ticket sales coupled with adjusted expectations for Sunday. Official weekend box office results will be released Monday, June 2nd – at which time we’ll update this post with any changes.]
