The "summer" movie season has been creeping up earlier and earlier each year. Oblivion opted to jump the gun on Iron Man 3, the first would-be blockbuster of the year, for a less competitive spot in mid-April. The placement appears to have paid off. The Tom Cruise-led sci-fi picture opened to $38 million. It will have one more wide-open week before Iron Man 3 siphons away an audience looking to see the biggest, visual effects-laden picture out there. One thing it won't have, however, is strong word-of-mouth. Viewers, which skewed male and were mostly over the age of 25, gave the movie just a "B-" rating, which won't help out the movie in coming weeks.
Specialty pick The Place Beyond the Pines tripled the amount of theatres showing the drama, but only received a boost of 23%. Still, that's consistent for small releases expanding wide. The $4.7 million weekend pushed the movie's cumulative total above $11 million, making it director Derek Cianfrance's biggest success yet.
The Jackie Robinson biopic 42 earned an "A+" rating from audiences last week, but it still dropped a bit more than would be expected given that excellent audience feedback. The $18 million weekend total reflected a 34% dip from the previous week. If the well-regarded feature continues to restrain its losses to a third or so, however, it should be in for the long haul.
This weekend turned out to be a good one for smaller releases targeted at niche audiences. The Christian-themed baseball picture Home Run earned $1.6 million and posted a $4,000 per-screen average. Filly Brown, a drama about the life of Latino street poet, earned $1.3 million off a miniscule budget. The movie played in the Sundance Film Festival last year. Rob Zombie's horror movie The Lords of Salem also played well, topping $622,000 while playing on 354 screens.
On Friday, the romantic comedy The Big Wedding will play against Pain & Gain, an action comedy about bodybuilders-turned-kidnappers.
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