Weekend Box Office: ‘Lego Movie’ and romantic trio lift up holiday weekend


By
 in , , ,

Despite a foursome of new releases, The Lego Movie repeated at No. 1 with a $62.5M four-day weekend, nearly outranking 2010’s Valentine’s Day ($63.1M) as the highest President’s Day Weekend on record. Its three-day weekend total of $49.85M was a slight drop from its $69.1M opening and, with two more weeks to itself, the toy feature could finish over $250M.

Opening at No. 2 was About Last Night, starring Kevin Hart, Michael Ealy, Regina Hall and Joy Bryant, with a $25.65M three-day/$27.84M four-day opening. The romantic comedy, which is a remake of the 1986 adaptation of David Mamet’s 1974 stage play, reached No. 1 on Valentine’s Day before falling behind. The appeal of the cast, especially Kevin Hart , who is still in the top six with his comedy Ride Along, and the good reviews made it the best date option for couples over the weekend.

It didn’t open as strongly as 2012’s Think Like A Man, which starred many of the same actors and actresses, which earned $33.64M for its opening weekend and $91.5M total back in 2012. But with a $12.5M budget, it’s already profitable. The goodwill from this film should only increase the anticipation for Think Like A Man Too, which brings back the same cast and comes out June 20.

At No. 3 was the remake of 1987 action flick RoboCop, starring Joel Kinnaman as a police officer transformed into a robotic crime-fighting machine, which earned $25.06M over the four-day weekend and has accumulated $30M since its Wednesday opening. This is in line with Sony’s remake of another Paul Verhoeven sci-fi feature of Total Recall, which opened to $25.57M back in 2012 and finished with a disappointing $58.87M.

This film faced similar problems as the Total Recall remake. While the advertisements emphasized current concerns and topics of interest, like drones and a corrupt corporate-military complex and human augmentation, the film seemed to go back to mimic its predecessor too often.

While it looked exciting and action-packed (the director José Padhila was behind the Brazlian action-film Elite Squad), it seemed to fall into the trap of graphical prowess at the cost of realism or vision (for a dark and impoverished future, Detroit sure looks like the inside of an Apple store). Its PG-13 rating also promised a more sterile and subdued experience than the original, which used ultraviolence to near-comedic satirical levels.

At No. 5 was the second 1980s romantic remake, Endless Love, starring Alex Pettyfer and relative newcomer Gabriella Wilde, which opened to $14.46M for the four-day weekend. Despite terrible reviews and an unknown cast, the romance was the primary option for teenage girls. However, the film was extremely frontloaded, as it made most of its money on Friday with $7.4M.

Way down at No. 7 was the fantasy romance Winter’s Tale, which flopped with a $8M opening. Starring Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe, the directorial debut for Akiva Goldsman, who wrote the screenplays for The Da Vinci Code, A Beautiful Mind and I Am Legend, was never able to clarify what, exactly, the film was about. It never made clear whether it was magic-based, fantasy, supernatural, or spiritual and the story of a man living forever to save the woman he loves got lost in the mix.

It was a robust lovely time at the theater, but updated 1980s flicks and a threesome of romances were no match for the Lego epic.