Movies
Box Office Recap: ‘Guardians’ Beats Newcomers With $17.6M
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is going strong in its fourth weekend with an additional $17.6 million, topping newcomers If I Stay, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, and When the Game Stands Tall.
The sci-fi action film scored the No. 1 spot for the second time and has become the summer’s top-grossing domestic release with $251.9 million ($489.5 million globally). Starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Dave Bautista and Lee Pace, Guardians beat out Thor ($449 million) and Captain America: The First Avenger ($371 million).
“Being the biggest movie of the season is unbelievably gratifying and a confirmation of the kind of work that the Marvel team has put in,” said Dave Hollis, Walt Disney Studios’ executive vice president of theatrical distribution. He cited the film’s momentum and the fact that “it isn’t done with its run.”
If I Stay did manage to place in third with $16.4 million and an A minus CinemaScore, following yet another summer holdover Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which gathered $16.8 million.
“The movie cost $11 million, so this opening is fine for us,” said Dan Fellman, Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution. “Tracking was a little bit stronger; tracking has been way off for the month of August. They had us at 20 [million dollars], so you get your expectations up a little bit. But we’re very pleased with the result.”
The teen tearjerker drama, starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Jamie Blackley, centers on a 17-year-old girl who loses her family in a car accident, which puts her in a coma. She must choose to live or die — fight to live for her boyfriend, or join her family in death.
Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez, scored a disappointing $6.5 million from 2,984 locations, much less than the first Sin City’s haul of $29.1 million.
“We weren’t prepared for this level of rejection by the public,” said Erik Lomis, The Weinstein Company’s head of theatrical distribution, about the blockbuster’s flop. “We thought the film would resonate more. It’s like the ice bucket challenge without the good cause.”
The Sin City sequel, which features Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis, earned a B minus CinemaScore.
Another newcomer for the weekend was Sony Pictures’ inspirational high school football drama When the Game Stands Tall, placing No. 5 with $9 million from 2,673 locations. The film is based on the story of Northern California high school De La Salle’s 151-game winning streak, and what happened after the team finally lost.
Fox’s R-rated comedy Let’s Be Cops took fourth place with $11 million, while The Weinstein Company’s The Giver scored $6.7 million, out-performing Sin City, and landed in sixth place.
See what films made the top 10 list at the box office this weekend by clicking the pages below!
10. Into the Storm – $3.8 million
Film Synopsis
In the span of a single day, the town of Silverton is ravaged by an unprecedented onslaught of tornadoes. The entire town is at the mercy of the erratic and deadly cyclones, even as storm trackers predict the worst is yet to come. Most people seek shelter, while others run towards the vortex, testing how far a storm chaser will go for that once-in-a-lifetime shot. Told through the eyes and lenses of professional storm chasers, thrill-seeking amateurs, and courageous townspeople, Into the Storm throws you directly into the eye of the storm to experience Mother Nature at her most extreme.
9. The Hundred-Foot Journey – $5.6 million
Film Synopsis
In The Hundred-Foot Journey, Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal) is a culinary ingénue with the gastronomic equivalent of perfect pitch. Displaced from their native India, the Kadam family, led by Papa (Om Puri), settles in the quaint village of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val in the south of France. Filled with charm, it is both picturesque and elegant – the ideal place to settle down and open an Indian restaurant, the Maison Mumbai. That is, until the chilly chef proprietress of Le Saule Pleureur, a Michelin starred, classical French restaurant run by Madame Mallory (Academy Award (R)-winner Helen Mirren), gets wind of it. Her icy protests against the new Indian restaurant a hundred feet from her own, escalate to all out war between the two establishments – until Hassan’s passion for French haute cuisine and for Mme. Mallory’s enchanting sous chef, Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon), combine with his mysteriously delicious talent to weave magic between their two cultures and imbue Saint-Antonin with the flavors of life that even Mme. Mallory cannot ignore. At first Mme. Mallory’s culinary rival, she eventually recognizes Hassan’s gift as a chef and takes him under her wing.
8. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For – $6.5 million
Film Synopsis
Co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller reunite to bring Miller’s visually stunning “Sin City” graphic novels back to the screen in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. Weaving together two of Miller’s classic stories with new tales, the town’s most hard boiled citizens cross paths with some of its more notorious inhabitants. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is the follow up to Rodriguez and Miller’s 2005 groundbreaking film, Frank Miller’s Sin City.
7. The Expendables 3 – $6.6 million
Film Synopsis
In The Expendables 3, Barney (Stallone), Christmas (Statham) and the rest of the team come face-to-face with Conrad Stonebanks (Gibson), who years ago co-founded The Expendables with Barney. Stonebanks subsequently became a ruthless arms trader and someone who Barney was forced to kill… or so he thought. Stonebanks, who eluded death once before, now is making it his mission to end The Expendables — but Barney has other plans. Barney decides that he has to fight old blood with new blood, and brings in a new era of Expendables team members, recruiting individuals who are younger, faster and more tech-savvy. The latest mission becomes a clash of classic old-school style versus high-tech expertise in the Expendables’ most personal battle yet.
6. The Giver – $6.7 million
Film Synopsis
The haunting story of The Giver centers on Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), a young man who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Yet as he begins to spend time with The Giver (Jeff Bridges), who is the sole keeper of all the community’s memories, Jonas quickly begins to discover the dark and deadly truths of his community’s secret past. With this newfound power of knowledge, he realizes that the stakes are higher than imagined – a matter of life and death for himself and those he loves most. At extreme odds, Jonas knows that he must escape their world to protect them all – a challenge that no one has ever succeeded at before. The Giver is based on Lois Lowry’s beloved young adult novel of the same name, which was the winner the 1994 Newbery Medal and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide.
5. When the Game Stands Tall – $9.1 million
Film Synopsis
Inspired by a true story, When the Game Stands Tall tells the remarkable journey of legendary football coach Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel), who took the De La Salle High School Spartans from obscurity to a 151-game winning streak that shattered all records for any American sport. When the streak is broken, and tragedy strikes the team, Coach Lad must teach his players – and the entire town – that it’s not about how you fall, but how you get back up.
4. Let’s Be Cops – $11 million
Film Synopsis
It’s the ultimate buddy cop movie except for one thing: they’re not cops. When two struggling pals dress as police officers for a costume party, they become neighborhood sensations. But when these newly-minted “heroes” get tangled in a real life web of mobsters and dirty detectives, they must put their fake badges on the line.
3. If I Stay – $16.4 million
Film Synopsis
Mia Hall (Chloë Grace Moretz) thought the hardest decision she would ever face would be whether to pursue her musical dreams at Juilliard or follow a different path to be with the love of her life, Adam (Jamie Blackley). But what should have been a carefree family drive changes everything in an instant, and now her own life hangs in the balance. Caught between life and death for one revealing day, Mia has only one decision left, which will not only decide her future but her ultimate fate. “If I Stay” is based on the best-selling novel of the same name.
2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – $16.8 million
Film Synopsis
The city needs heroes. Darkness has settled over New York City as Shredder and his evil Foot Clan have an iron grip on everything from the police to the politicians. The future is grim until four unlikely outcast brothers rise from the sewers and discover their destiny as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Turtles must work with fearless reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox) and her wise-cracking cameraman Vern Fenwick (Will Arnett) to save the city and unravel Shredder’s diabolical plan.
1. Guardians of the Galaxy – $17.6 million
Film Synopsis
From Marvel, the studio that brought you the global blockbuster franchises of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Avengers, comes a new team-the Guardians of the Galaxy. An action-packed, epic space adventure, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy expands the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the cosmos, where brash adventurer Peter Quill finds himself the object of an unrelenting bounty hunt after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by Ronan, a powerful villain with ambitions that threaten the entire universe. To evade the ever-persistent Ronan, Quill is forced into an uneasy truce with a quartet of disparate misfits-Rocket, a gun-toting raccoon, Groot, a tree-like humanoid, the deadly and enigmatic Gamora and the revenge-driven Drax the Destroyer. But when Quill discovers the true power of the orb and the menace it poses to the cosmos, he must do his best to rally his ragtag rivals for a last, desperate stand-with the galaxy’s fate in the balance.