'Warm Bodies' heats up a cool weekend

At least teens had a good movie to go to this weekend. Viewers under the age of 18 gave an "A" CinemaScore rating to Warm Bodies, which debuted in line with expectations, to the tune of $19.5 million. People over the age of 18 lowered the overall score to a "B+." Much of the success of this zombie love story is owed to Summit, which has had plenty of experiencing marketing
supernatural romances to teens thanks to the runaway success of the Twilight series. They even did late-night Thursday screenings, which inched the movie's cumulative total to $20.03 million.

For a while, aging action stars were officially a thing (see: Taken, Red, The Expendables), but it could be that the market for these pictures has cooled off, especially when the stars are playing it straight. That could explain the poor debut of Sylvester Stallone in  Bullet to the Head, which came up with just $4.5 million. Sure, there were fewer audiences on Sunday because of the Super Bowl, but this also comes just weeks after Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Last Stand also had an opening in the single
millions, $6.3 million.

Still, Bullet to the Head did just fine compared to the opening of Stand Up Guys, which had a below-top-ten debt of $1.5 million. The limited release did have a higher per-screen average ($2,200) than Bullet to the Head, ($1,800 per screen), but that's not that big of a difference. Since Stand Up Guys went a more limited route, it has more of a chance to build an audience in coming weeks, however.

The Oscar nominee box office award of the week is a...tie. Silver Linings Playbook
showed a remarkable hold, rising from fourth to third place with $8.1 million, just 15% off from last week. Argo added 300 screens and went up 16% from last week for an additional $2.1 million.

Oscar-nominated documentary The Gatekeepers got off to a decent start, averaging $22,000 per screen in two locations. Koch, the documentary about Ed Koch, the former New York City mayor who died on Friday opening day, finished with a $20,000 per screen average on two screens.

On Friday, Bridesmaids breakout star Melissa McCarthy gets a whole movie to have fun in, Identity Thief, Steven Soderbergh directs the pharmaceutical thriller Side Effects, and Top Gun unleashes those fighter jets in 3D.