Box Office Report: Need for Speed starts slow, A Single Mom’s Club flops

I guess the title has already made it clear that this was quite a disappointing weekend for the new openers in theaters. Need for Speed and Tyler Perry’s A Single Moms Club both underperformed, allowing last week’s openers, 300: Rise of an Empire, and Mr. Peabody and Sherman to regain the top 2 spots.

Need for Speed, despite being based on one of the most popular video game franchises of all time, failed to attract most of it’s gaming fan base here, as Need for Speed barely earned $17.8 million this weekend. That isn’t any better than previous video game adaptations, and definitely doesn’t help to cement video game franchises as profitable. This doesn’t really bode well for upcoming video game adaptations like Assassin’s Creed, Last of Us etc. Being like a lower budget rip-off of Fast and Furious doesn’t help, and only having a 24% rotten tomatoes score most probably turned away the casual moviegoers. With a disappointing B+ Cinemascore, do not expect this to hold on well. Meanwhile, for the demographics, 70% were male, and 55% were over the age of 25. 43% of revenue earned were from 3D.

The other new opener was in an even worse state. A Single Mom’s Club further proves that the name Tyler Perry is becoming less of a sensation. Yes, he might have, among all directors, directed the 3rd highest amount of $20+ opening movies, but with the market introducing more and more films for the African-American crowd, it seems like people are becoming less interested in Perry. This film continues the downward trend his films have been facing lately, starting from last year’s Peeples, which only earned $9.1 million, and continuing on to last December’s A Madea’s Christmas, which only opened to $16 million, which was the lowest opening with the Madea name, and the second lowest grossing installment overall for the Madea name. This film earned only $8.3 million, the only film directed by Perry to ever open to below $10 million. Lionsgate seemed to have a lack of confidence in this film, as they opened it in only 1896 theaters, the lowest yet for Tyler Perry’s films. For the demographics, 79% of moviegoers were female while 80% of moviegoers were over the age of 25, and they awarded the film an A- cinemascore.

First place went to Mr. Peabody and Sherman, which held on really well, managing to grasp first from 300: Rise of an Empire. It only dropped 32% this weekend, for a weekend gross of $21.8 million. (In comparison, The Croods dropped 39% last March on it’s second weekend) The film has earned $63.8 million to date. Last week’s biggest film, 300: Rise of an Empire, had a huge drop of 57% to $19.2 million. That was expected, as it was an event movie last week, and it has competition from Need for Speed this weekend. It dropped a bit bigger than the original 300, which dropped 54% in it’s second weekend. The film has earned $78.4 million domestically thus far.

Non-Stop held on really well, only dipping 32.9% this weekend for a weekend gross of $10.6 million. The film has earned $68.8 million domestically to date. The 6th position went to The LEGO Movie, which dipped 29.4% to $7.7 million for a current cume of $236.9 million. The film is still easily the highest grossing film domestically so far this year.

7th went to Son of God, which dipped 46.7% to $5.5 million for a current gross of $51 million. 8th went to The Grand Budapest Hotel, which had a huge per-theater average for a film which opened in 66 theaters. The film earned $3.64 million for a current cume of $4.8 million. That represents a per-theater average of $55,122. 9th went to Frozen, which earned $2.148 million this weekend, a dip of 27.3% from last weekend. This film has earned $396.39 million thus far domestically, which is a humungous amount. 10th place went to The Monuments Men, which earned $2 million, representing a 32.9% drop from last weekend. The film has earned $73.9 million to date.

Veronica Mars earned $2 million from 291 theaters, missing the top 10 by $74,432. This film won’t be holding on well going forward, as evident from the percentage of moviegoers who rushed out on Friday to see it first. Meanwhile, Bad Words opened in 6 theaters to the beat of $113,301, representing a per-theater average of $18,884. That isn’t really great, and does not bode well for it’s upcoming nationwide expansion.

The top 10 earned an estimated $98,624,322 million, which beat last year’s $93 million on the same weekend.

You can also check out the box office forecast for this week’s offerings, Divergent and Muppets: Most Wanted, here.