It wasn’t the strongest week for new releases stateside, 4 new movies battled it out for the top spot but it was a Dolphin that swam into box office victory.
Dolphin Tale didn’t widen it’s release so strong word of mouth and a limp selection of newbie’s helped it on it’s way.
The highest new entry was 50/50, the comic drama starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen. based on a true story, Gordon-Levitt plays Adam a young man with a good life who discovers he has a rare and possibly fatal form of cancer. Hardly sounds like a laugh a minute and Rogen has been on a streak of misses of late, that said Gordon-Levitt is always watchable.
Courageous is the family drama about a group of Police Officers dealing with the job, relationships and parenthood.
Haunted house thriller Dream House was my secret weapon for at least the top 3 but sadly the Daniel Craig movie just about got 6th place with a really disappointing $8.2 million for the weekend. Which for the genre is a real underperformer, even the likes of Dark Water and Skeleton Key did better.
The last new entry was also batting well below the average for it’s genre. What’s Your Number (aka Generic Hollywood Rom-com number 4) stars Chris Evans and Anna Faris who can both do so much better than this dire looking mess. It had the widest reach of all the new releases but barely managed $5.6 million, coming off the success of Captain America this is a brutal blow for Evans trying to establish his leading man credentials.
The US top ten looked like this.
1 – Dolphin Tale $14,245,000
2 – Moneyball $12,500,000
3 – The Lion King $11,057,000
4 – 50/50 $8,848,000
5 – Courageous $8,800,000
6 – Dream House $8,209,185
7 – Abduction $5,650,000
8 – What’s Your Number? $5,600,000
9 – Contagion $64,702,000
10 – Killer Elite $4,855,000
There will be a full report of the UK Box Office later in the week.
