At the end of the day, it was a Wimpy Kid who beat up on the highly stylized and sexualized Sucker Punch. An effective trailer campaign launched by Warner Brothers stirred up plenty of interest in Zack Snyder’s latest offering, but a 17% drop from Friday to Saturday squelched its chances of winning the weekend. Snyder previously directed Watchmen and 300, both of which performed much better on their opening weekend than Sucker Punch, which came in at number two with $19M.
Sucker Punch was leading the weekend on Friday, but the drop-off cleared the way for Disney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules to win the weekend. The sequel to Diary of a Wimpy Kid outperformed its predecessor: Rodrick Rules made $24.4M, while the original Wimpy Kid made about $22M on its opening weekend. With a reported budget of about $18M, Rodrick Rules should put the franchise in good shape for a third movie.
Bradley Cooper’s Limitless didn’t have any trouble retaining an audience. The film only dropped about 19% (very solid for a second weekend) and made an additional $15.2M. That puts its two week tally at $41M. Matthew McConaughey fared almost as well.
The Lincoln Lawyer enjoyed a small 16% drop from last weekend, and made $11M this past weekend. Both films had better than average critic ratings, and should continue to make some steady progress at the box office based on some good word of mouth.
Rango rounded out the top five with $9.8M, dropping about 35% in its fourth week in release. The film has grossed about $106.3M to date.
Other box office news:
- Battle: Los Angeles just surpassed $70M after three weeks.
- The Adjustment Bureau just cleared its $50M budget after four weeks.
- Mars Needs Moms looks to be a huge flop, making only $19M after three weeks, with a reported budget of $150M.
- Just Go With It just crept over the $100M mark.
- Indie films Win Win, Miral, Bill Cunningham New York, Potiche, and Jane Eyre all had per/screen averages above $10,000, the best averages of the week.
