Domestically this was a very weak weekend. The defending champion held its crown among a very unimpressive selection of new challengers. Think Like A Man dropped about 47% to bring in around $18 Million. The back-to-back wins catapulted the film passed Titanic 3D as the highest grossing film released this month.
The second place finisher was the most recent stop-motion animated film from the guys over at Aardman Studios. The Pirates! Band of Misfits did typically weak for the British Animation Studio who has yet to have a huge box office win despite a quality of output that ranks right up with PIXAR.
The Lucky One sputtered into third place with just over $11 Million, representing a 50% drop over its debut weekend. If the number seems low that’s because it is. The weekend as a whole was incredibly light compared to last year. All of this has the distinct feel of the quiet before the storm as The Avengers comes out next week.
Speaking of the Mighty Marvel Movie a mere days away, it opened in about 70% of its international markets over this weekend and absolutely dominated. Either setting records or coming close in nearly all if it’s released territories, The Avengers earned over $178 million, a number that is alone bigger than this weekend’s domestic top 20 combined.
One of the other main reasons why the weekend floundered was the flop of The Five Year Engagement. The last weekend of April is not generally a dead zone, and just last year Fast Five opened to over $86 Million in this weekend, so a comedy with impressive pedigree should have done better. It didn’t and the weekend suffered.
Next weekend brings The Avengers, don’t really have much else to say about that. There is an outside chance The Avengers can make history next weekend, but at the very least it will be huge. It might not be, but I am officially going out on a limb and predicting the largest opening weekend ever, with a long-shot at being the first $200 Million opening weekend.
1 Think Like a Man $18,000,000
2 The Pirates! Band of Misfits $11,400,000
3 The Lucky One $11,325,000
4 The Hunger Games $11,250,000
5 The Five-Year Engagement $11,157,000
6 Safe (2012) $7,720,000
7 The Raven $7,250,000
8 Chimpanzee $5,460,000
9 The Three Stooges $5,400,000
10 The Cabin in the Woods $4,500,000
