'Big Hero 6' Trumps 'Interstellar' at the Box Office

What'd I say about not underestimating the earning power of animated kids' movies? Disney/Marvel's Big Hero 6 beat Christopher Nolan's Interstellar at the box office over the weekend, earning $52.6 million to Interstellar's $50 million. That gives it the second highest opening of an animated film so far this year, after The LEGO Movie ($69 million).

Still, Interstellar's $50 million is nothing to turn up one's nose at. In fact, this is only the fourth time in history that two movies have opened at or above $50 million. Add in the dough from Interstellar's two days of limited release before it went out to digital theatres, and the space epic has earned $52.15 million. However, 26% of that came from IMAX screens, which indicates that, while Nolan fanatics showed up on opening weekend to see the film in all its space-y glory, Paramount had a tougher time pulling in casual moviegoers of the sort not willing to pay premium IMAX prices. The movie earned less than $37 million on non-IMAX screens.

Update: Variety is now reporting that Interstellar made only $47.5 million, falling short of Paramount's $50-$55 million projections.

Rounding out the top five were Gone Girl (in spot 3, up from spot 4 last week), Ouija (for God's sake, someone get this movie out of the top five!) and St. Vincent.

In limited releases, Birdman added 231 theatres, but its weekend haul still shrunk by 4%. Fox Searchlight is taking the movie nationwide this weekend, so we should see an uptick then. The Theory of Everything, which opened in five theatres, took $260,865 for a respectable per-theatre average of $41,400, putting it in a good place for when awards season starts to ramp up.

Italian comedy/drama Viva la Libertà pulled in a not-too-shabby $6,300 in two theatres, and docudrama Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain got $6,150 in one. For the docs, this weekend gave us On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter ($343,876), National Gallery ($9,650) and Death Metal Angola ($2,500).