20th Century Fox And the non-hits just keep on coming.
Brad Pitt, Seth Rogen, Matt Damon and Daniel Craig all got beat by at the weekend box office by a week-old movie about a fish.
Anna Faris and Chris Evans got beat worse.
Faris' and Evans' comedy What's Your Number? barely managed to make the Top 10, with a weak $5.6 million estimated Friday-Sunday debut.
The movie is Evans' second non-starter in as many weeks, after the low-profile Puncture.
Compared to What's Your Number?, the A-list thriller Dream House, starring Craig, Naomi Watts and Rachel Weisz, did a little better, or a lot worse, if you consider its reputed $50 million budget. Still, it's too early to call flop on Dream House as its international cast figures to be a draw overseas.
Rogen's and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's 50/50 was the weekend's "top" new release, meaning it opened in fourth place. It was Rogen's smallest-opening movie ever about cancer; on the other hand, it was his first appropriately budgeted one. 50/50 cost about what it made: $8 million; his earlier Funny People was a $75 million money-loser.
The no-star Courageous, the other major new opener, was a rarity: an unqualified success. The $1 million movie, from the same church-based company that produced the Kirk Cameron hit Firerpoof, nearly trumped 50/50 in the standings, with an $8.8 million Friday-Sunday gross.
Matt Damon's Margaret finally found its way into theaters (all two of them) after six years in limbo. The drama, also starring Anna Paquin, "grossed" less than $7,500.
Among the holdovers, the aforementioned week-old fish movie, Dolphin Tale, jumped two places to give Ashley Judd her first No. 1 movie since the Clinton administration. The $37 million movie has now made about that much domestically.
Pitt's Moneyball, meanwhile, is sure to take grief for getting beat by the fish movie, but it actually held well as it held onto second place. Plus, since baseball is now to sports movies what cancer is to dramas, how bad is a two-weekend total of $38.5 million really?
Taylor Lautner's Abduction showed a bit of leg to go with its abs, as the much-panned film saw ticket sales drop no more or less than usual from its opening weekend.
Overall, it was an up weekend for Hollywood—an odd footnote considering What's Your Number? can now be counted among Hollywood's fall casualties. The ever-growing list includes I Don't Know How She Does It, Straw Dogs, Warrior, Killer Elite and Bucky Larson.
Here's a complete look at the weekend's top movies, per Friday-Sunday estimates as compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- Dolphin Tale, $14.2 million
- Moneyball, $12.5 million
- The Lion King, $11.1 million
- 50/50, $8.85 million
- Courageous, $8.8 million
- Dream House, $8.2 million
- Abduction, $5.7 million
- What's Your Number?, $5.6 million
- Contagion, $5 million
- Killer Elite, $4.9 million