Riddick
Considering the nature of the holiday weekend and everything aligned against it, it’s little wonder that studios put out very little for the opening week of September. The return of football, kids back in school around the country and other events tends to make this one of the quietest weekends of the year. The weekend’s top film barely cracked $67 million, but that’s still up something close to 30% above what was out last year, so it’s being viewed as a very positive thing compared to the usual $100 million plus weekends they get during the end of summer.
The only new film this week was Riddick, which opened at $18.6 million domestically and netted another $7 million or so overseas in a limited rollout on its $38 million budget. The film pretty much hit expectations and while it’s not a grand slam, it’s being reported that attendance is up over Pitch Black but under what Chronicles of Riddick was, which makes sense considering the time between and the lack of familiarity with the character. The feature was pretty frontloaded for fans and marketing was aimed squarely at them – you likely didn’t find a lot of Fast and Furious Vin Diesel female fans showing up to see this, but it’s a decent start at what you expect Vin Diesel is wanting to do in get the character back and going in his own control now.
The only other surprise this weekend is Instructions Not Included, which expanded to over 700 screens this weekend and brought in another $8 million, putting it in third place for this Spanish language film that’s garnering a lot of attention.
There’s not a lot on tap next week that will go wide but there are a lot of limited run films debuting:
September 12
- The Family (p.m. screenings)
- Insidious Chapter 2 (p.m. screenings)
September 13
- And While We Were Here (limited)
- Blue Caprice (limited)
- GMO OMG (limited)
- Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction (limited)
- Herb & Dorothy 50X50 (limited)
- Informant (limited)
- Jayne Mansfield’s Car (limited)
- Mother of George (limited)
- Plush (limited)
- Sample This (limited)
- Wadjda (NY, LA)
| RANK | TITLE | DISTRIBUTOR NAME | WEEKEND REVENUE | CUME REVENUE | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| REVENUE | # OF LOCATIONS* | LOC AVG | ||||
| 1 | Riddick | Universal | $18,673,070 | 3,107 | 6,010 | $18,673,070 |
| 2 | Lee Daniels’ The Butler | The Weinstein Company | $8,900,000 | 3,330 | 2,672 | $91,901,377 |
| 3 | Instructions Not Included | Lionsgate | $8,100,000 | 717 | 11,297 | $20,311,604 |
| 4 | We’re The Millers | Warner Bros. | $7,925,000 | 3,445 | 2,300 | $123,843,904 |
| 5 | Planes | Disney | $4,274,000 | 3,033 | 1,409 | $79,279,000 |
| 6 | One Direction: This Is Us | Sony | $4,100,000 | 2,735 | 1,499 | $23,990,510 |
| 7 | Elysium | Sony | $3,100,000 | 2,241 | 1,383 | $85,077,267 |
| 8 | Blue Jasmine | Sony Pictures Classics | $2,688,310 | 1,069 | 2,514 | $25,449,196 |
| 9 | Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters | 20th Century Fox | $2,500,000 | 2,045 | 1,222 | $59,847,766 |
| 10 | World’s End, The | Focus Features | $2,301,784 | 1,520 | 1,514 | $21,736,774 |
| 11 | Mortal Instruments | Sony | $2,200,000 | 2,519 | 873 | $27,844,204 |
| 12 | Getaway | Warner Bros. | $2,185,000 | 2,135 | 1,023 | $8,673,679 |