For the studio behind the yellow, goggle-wearing peanuts known as Minions, the five-day holiday weekend was great. Despicable Me 2 earned an astonishing $142 million over the five-day period, with its traditional three-day weekend bringing in $82.5 million of that total. People liked the original, and Universal marketed the follow-up as more of the same--but with even more of those adorable, babbling Minions. The budget for the animated feature was also just $76 million--assuredly much less than that of Disney behemoth Monsters University. Given this performance, there will definitely be a Despicable Me 3 in the works. Its $142 million opening narrowly tops the five-day opening record held by Toy Story 3, and this feature shows all signs of being the top animated feature of the summer, if not 2013.
The Lone Ranger had a five-day debut of $48.9 million, and a regular weekend total of $29.4 million. But for a film that likely costs over $200 million, and doesn't have global appeal, that's horrible news. THR is already speculating that Disney will take a writedown that could top $150 million for the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced feature, which was supposed to replicate the success of Pirates of the Caribbean by having Johnny Depp in a similar over-the-top role caked in makeup. Luckily, Disney has the successes of Iron Man 3 and Monsters University to bolster its bottom line, but this is a costly misfire that's only slightly better than last year's failure of John Carter.
Debuting in eighth place, Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain earned $17.4 million since its Wednesday opening, $10.1 million of which came from the regular three-day weekend. That's an excellent performance for the stand-up comedy performance, which had a budget of just $2.5 million. That's also an improvement on the $7 million total for Hart's 2011 stand-up film, Kevin Hart: Laugh at My Pain. The comedian's strongest following is in markets like Atlanta and Baltimore, and the film's distribution plan has saturated those markets. Hart is definitely a star on the rise, and I suspect it won't be long before he toplines a comedy feature.
The Way, Way Back opened on Friday, and earned an encouraging $575,000, which amounts to a $30,000 per-screen average, the highest of any film this week. The comedic indie, which includes performances from Steve Carell and Allison Janney, takes place at a summer beach house and is a ripe offering for the dog days of summer.
This Friday, Adam Sandler and co. return for Grown Ups 2, and manmade monsters go up against alien ones in Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim.
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