Viewers inundate theatres for ‘Noah’

Darren Aronofosky’s Noah has proven itself an unqualified success. Having bowed to $44 million domestically, Noah has already grossed more than Aronofsky’s first four films combined. It marks the most successful debut ever for a film in which Russell Crowe plays the lead role.

Noah’s audience was evenly split along gender lines, and skewed older: About 74 percent was over the age of 25. Though they showed up in droves, viewers did not leave feeling overly impressed with what they saw, awarding the film a fairly weak C CinemaScore grade. However, recent success The Wolf of Wall Street also earned the middling C and yet managed to hold well. Noah, of course, doesn’t have the advantage of that movie’s Oscar buzz, but it still has a good chance of reaping $110 million in total.

Last weekend’s champ Divergent clocked in at No. 2. The YA actioner dipped 52 percent, which is an impressive hold, considering The Hunger Games suffered a downturn of 62 percent its second weekend in theatres. Divergent added another $26.5 million to its cume that now stands at over $95 million.

Third and fourth place went to current family offerings Muppets Most Wanted and Mr. Peabody & Sherman, respectively. The former may have failed to match the debut of its predecessor when it opened last weekend, but it made up for that disappointment (somewhat) by out-earning The Muppets its second weekend out of the gate. Most Wanted grossed $11.4 million, while The Muppets earned a weaker $11.1 million over its sophomore outing in 2011. For its part, Mr. Peabody & Sherman wasn’t too far behind Kermit and company with a $9.4 million haul. The animated flick now stands at $94.9 million and is on track to cross $100 million within the next several days.

Surprise hit God’s Not Dead continued to chart a successful box-office course. The faith-based film earned $9.1 million to land the weekend’s No. 5 slot. The movie can now boast $22 million after 10 days in theatres.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is officially the highest-grossing movie ever for director Wes Anderson.  The film finally expanded wide this past weekend and earned $8.8 million. Hotel’s cume stands at an impressive $24.4 million, with more on the way following this weekend’s continued expansion.

In dismal seventh place, Sabotage bombed with just $5.3 million. That is the worst haul for a film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in almost 30 years and is the actor’s third disappointment in a row. In other words, it might be time for Arnold to holster that gun.

Cesar Chavez raked in $3 million, which, although solid, yet fell short of expectation. The film will likely perform well on Monday, however, which is Cesar Chavez Day.

Finally, the weekend concluded on a considerable high note when Disney’s Frozen became the highest-grossing animated film of all time. The princess movie wrested the title from former record-holder Toy Story 3 when it opened strong in its final market, Japan. Where Toy Story 3 grossed $1.063 billion worldwide, Frozen has now earned $1.072 billion. Can it go on to beat The Dark Knight Rises ($1.084 billion)?

'Noah’ to flood theatres

Will all the controversy and all the press awarded the controversy reap dividends at the box office this weekend? That’s the question facing Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. The director’s Biblical epic (action movie? Disaster flick? Faith-based offering? The latter seems the most unlikely…) opens in 3,500 theatres today. The familiar story of a man, a flood, and a host of animals boasts a trio of recognizable names: Jennifer Connelly, who is aces at playing crazy Russell Crowe’s supportive wife; Emma Watson; and of course, Crowe himself. Aronofsky, who directed 2010’s Academy Award-winning Black Swan, also brings a formidable fanbase to the table. All told, Paramount is expecting returns to tally out to between $30 and $33 million. Noah is already performing well overseas, in South Korea and Mexico specifically, where it bowed last week. Even if the movie fails to gain traction in the United States, international sales should help keep it out of the red.

Cesar Chavez, about the life and work of the iconic Mexican civil-rights activist, and Sabotage, starring the iconic (of a different sort) Arnold Schwarzenegger, also open this weekend, though neither is expected to do boffo business. Playing in 2,486 locations, the latter is Schwarzenegger’s most recent attempt at a big-screen comeback. His last two efforts, 2013's The Last Stand and Escape Plan, barely made a splash at the box office and didn’t do much to revive his acting career. With poor reviews (21 percent rotten on Rotten Tomatoes) and a rote drug-cartel-and-kidnapping plotline, it would be surprising if Sabotage proved the hit Arnold has been waiting for. Expect an opening weekend gross of under $10 million.

Cesar Chavez has also received poor reviews (37 percent rotten), however, a strong Hispanic turnout could propel the film to modest success. Opening in 644 locations, Chavez could pull in as much as, or even more than, $5 million.

Building momentum like a snowball racing down one of those mountains framing The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson’s specialty hit expands yet again this weekend, to 1,000 theatres. Jason Bateman’s Bad Words finally gets its wide release (800 theatres) today, but having disappointed in limited release the past two weekends, expectations for the movie’s broader national performance are low.

'Gravity' holds strong amid weak box office

To no one’s very great surprise - albeit to much industry excitement - Gravity completed another successful box-office orbit this past weekend. With yet another $30 million haul, the intergalactic thriller has now earned over $170 million in domestic sales.  At 28%, its fiscal drop was a little steeper this weekend (compared with last weekend’s dip of 23%), but at this point in the film’s wildly successful run, focusing on five percentage points is akin to splitting hairs.

Furthering the déjà vu nature of today’s roundup, Captain Phillips again clocked in at No. 2. Tom Hanks’ suspense tale suffered from a larger slip in sales than Gravity did during its sophomore outing: Down 33%, to gross $17.3 million. In all, the Paul-Greengrass directed, modern day-pirate touting, Oscar-chasing Phillips has earned $53.3 million.

Unfortunately, it seems the rest of the domestic box office offered little audience incentive. Even with Halloween right around the corner, the lone horror feature, Carrie, proved itself unable to scare up business. The film didn’t perform nearly as poorly as the worst of the box-office naysayers had predicted Friday morning, though neither did it justify those optimists who thought (wished?) it could compete with Gravity. Instead, Carrie made an all right $17 million. Compared with Gravity, which skews slightly male, and Phillips, which draws an older crowd, those viewers who did see Carrie were mostly female (54%) and under the age of 25 (56%). Maybe it’ll fare better when it streams on Netflix?

Rounding out the top five (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 took the No. 4 slot with another solid weekend, earning $10 million to boost its overall gross to $93.1 million) Escape Plan earned roughly $9.8 million. The mostly male audience (66%) was also mostly over the age of 30, neatly aligning the Stallone/Schwarzenegger vehicle with this weekend’s theme of “to no one’s great surprise.”

Well, almost no one. Even given The Fifth Estate’s middling reviews, fans of Benedict Cumberbatch may not have expected the film to fare quite as poorly as it did. Apparently, American audiences found little of interest in the Julian Assange/WikiLeaks feature. The Fifth Estate raked in just $1.5 million, earning the lowest gross of any film that opened in over 1,500 theatres this year.

Thankfully for Cumberbatch, his other movie out this weekend, 12 Years A Slave, managed to exceed expectations. On Friday we speculated the film might make $30,000 or so at each of its 19 locations. This morning we learned Steve McQueen’s latest, acclaimed feature averaged $50,000 per theatre. Its total weekend haul amounts to $960,000, a wonderful start for an art-house flick. Fox Searchlight will screen the film in 100 more theatres this coming weekend.

Fellow critical darling All Is Lost may end up competing with Slave at the Academy Awards, but it proved itself a weak opponent at the box office. Robert Redford’s one-man drama took in just $97,400.

To pull the camera out, so to speak, and take a wider view of this weekend’s earnings: Those films that made up the top 12 earned a total of $96.4 million. Even given the endurance of Gravity’s run, that number still signals a 20% drop in earnings from this time last year. Let’s see if this coming weekend can improve October’s outlook.

Abigail Breslin & Arnold Schwarzenegger team up for 'Maggie'

Hollywood's zombie craze has reached a fever pitch. The most recent undead project to join the fray is Maggie. Abigail Breslin will star as a young woman infected with a "walking dead" virus in the feature, which will shoot this fall. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays her father. The original log line for the 2011 Black List script by John Scott 3 read like this: "As a “walking dead” virus spreads across
the country, a farm family
helps their eldest daughter come to terms with her infection as she
slowly becomes a flesh-eating zombie." I can't imagine Schwarzenegger as the comforting type--he's more the kind of actor who solves problems through action--but perhaps there's more beyond the description that suits the action star's strengths.

What Maggie won't have in its favor is novelty. Zombie movies, books, and TV shows are everywhere. The shockingly good 28 Days Later a decade ago may have kick-started the trend, joined by its sequel 28 Weeks Later in 2007, Zombieland in 2009, AMC's "The Walking Dead," which premiered in 2010, and ParaNorman, The Crazies, and this year's Warm Bodies and World War Z. Then there's the still-pending works like the adaptation of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. Zombie culture has become an epidemic in itself.

This feature will start filming this fall, so this casting combination is likely set. Last May, Variety reported Chloe Moretz was circling the role, but that deal fell apart. All along, the commercials director Henry Hobson, who would make the feature debut with the zombie movie, has been attached.  Breslin has since filmed the yet-to-be-released features August: Osage County and Ender's Game, both of which will likely raise the profile of the all-grown-up Little Miss Sunshine star by the time Maggie is released.

Jessica Chastain's 'Mama' and 'Zero Dark Thirty' could go 1-2 this weekend

Jessica Chastain just won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. Now she has a standard horror genre picture coming out this weekend, though it does come courtesy of executive producer Guillermo del Toro. Still, it's unlikely that she'll be "Norbit-ed." The term refers to how Eddie Murphy, nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Dreamgirls in 2006, may have had his changes torpedoed by his starring role in the lowbrow comedy. With a 63% positive rating on Rotten
Tomatoes (compared to Norbit's 7% positive rating), it's unlikely Mama (2,647 theatres) will be an embarrassment. The PG-13 rated picture is a "throwback and a modest delight
for people who like a good scare but prefer not to be terrorized or
grossed out," observes THR's critic Todd McCarthy. "Bloodthirsty female teens" will be a prime audience for the movie, which centers on Chastain and two young girls she takes in after a traumatic experience. An opening in the high teens would put the picture ahead of Zero Dark Thirty (also starring Chastain), though they should be neck and neck. If Zero Dark Thirty loses a third of its audience, which would be a particularly good hold, it will end up around $16 million, which should be enough for second place, if not first.

Last Stand and Broken City will both compete for adult male audiences this weekend. They're
expected to do fairly similar business, with each one ending up in the low teen millions. The Last Stand (2,913 theatres) is Arnold Schwarzenegger's first leading-man role since he underwent the transition from movie star to politician, becoming a two-term governor of California. However, the action hero had much-touted cameos in the Expendables movies that many already considered his "return." Wittily self-referential, the film
particularly sends up Schwarzenegger’s age," reports FJI critic Marsha McCreadie, noting a scene where he has to don glasses to get a look at a bullet wound. The answer to the "implied question behind the film: Can
Schwarzenegger still deliver?" is yes.

A corrupt mayor (Russell Crowe) hires a P.I. (Mark Wahlberg) to find out if his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is being unfaithful in Broken City (2,620 theatres). Of course, that initial hint of betrayal spirals into something much bigger in this "noir-ish" look
at New York City. The "broad, splashy pieces of easily digestible
narrative, visual and character components...provides
an easy ride into a cheesy, lazily imagined New York political
scandal," offers critic Doris Toumarkine. That might be enough to get adult males into seats this weekend, at least the ones who prefer to see power wielded cerebrally, not physically.

After spending three weeks playing in around 750 theatres, Silver Linings Playbook will open wide, into, 2,523 locations. The romantic comedy has earned $43 million to date. This weekend should add at least another $10 million to the total. All four lead actors (Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver) received Oscar nominations for their performances. With a cipher of a title and a premise that's hard to reduce to a one-line plot description, this movie has sought to gain viewers primarily through word-of-mouth, which is why it has rolled out so slowly.

On Monday, we'll see which Jessica Chastain film led the box office and how many Academy Award nominees kept their spot in the top ten.