Weekend Box Office | featured news

"Straight Outta Compton" marked three consecutive weekends atop the box office, while the Christian drama "War Room" proved an unexpected success. … Click to Continue »

NEW YORK (AP) — The DreamWorks animated alien adventure "Home" beat out the Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart comedy "Get Hard" at the box office, but both films debuted strongly.

"Cinderella" is the belle of the box office, where Disney's live-action fairy tale debuted with $70.1 million over the weekend at North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The weekend was very kind to last week’s one and only new release, Oblivion. Otherwise, the charts have remained more or less static since last weekend. Oblivion did quite well in the box office, making over $38.1 million; while this is at the bottom end of its predicted range for its opening weekend gross, it’s still a respectable sum, and the film can probably expect similarly impressive numbers in later weeks.

Both of last week’s new releases did very well in the box office this weekend—even despite the arguably vast disparity in quality between the two releases. Making the top of the charts is 42, which outdid its modest expectations (even for a heartwarming based-on-a-true-story yarn), earning revenues in the ballpark (ha) of $27.2 million on its opening weekend.

...Top earnings over the weekend went to last week’s classic horror film reboot: Evil Dead, which made a tidy sum of $26 million. Next in line for revenues was G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which made another $21.1 million, for a total of $86.6 million so far.

This weekend’s box office turnout yielded a bit of a surprise for this last week’s new releases—whether or not this was a good surprise certainly depends on who you ask. What didn’t come as a surprise was the continued success of Oz: The Great and Powerful, which earned another $42.2 million over the weekend, for a tidy sum of $145 million so far.

Oz: The Great and Powerful made the most over the weekend by far, earning just over the top of its predicted range of revenues at $80.2 million.

Last week’s new releases did relatively well at the box office this weekend—they at least made it to the top spots on the charts, which is more than can be said for some of the groups of releases of previous weeks. Of the new releases, Jack the Giant Slayer fared the best at the theaters, making a sum of just over $28 million. Given its lukewarm reception, this is certainly a respectable showing.