"X2" Beats "Daddy" on Mom's Day

On Mom's Day, the X-Men kept Daddy down but not entirely out.

As X2: X-Men United earned another $40 million over Mother's Day weekend, Eddie Murphy's new kiddie comedy, Daddy Day Care, giggled up a lively $27.6 million in second place.

Although the mutant sci-fi sequel, featuring the exploits of Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Mystique, et al., dropped 53 percent from its opening weekend, it still attracted about 40 percent of the weekend's moviegoers, earning a still marvelous $10,680 average at 3,748 sites, according to final studio figures Monday.

By getting a jump on other big special-effects summer fare (such as next week's highly anticipated The Matrix Reloaded), the PG-13 Fox release has now grossed $147.7 million, making it this year's fifth film to pass the $100 million mark, a goal it acheived on Wednesday, after just six days of release.

However, there was some romper room left for hit-starved Murphy's latest effort to get laughs.

His PG-rated Sony/Revolution Studios release accounted for about 27 percent of weekend ticket sales, averaging $8,197 at 3,370 sites. That was much better than the low-wattage openings for his last three live-action bombs, released in the fall, summer and spring of last year: I-Spy (only averaging $4,008 for a $12.7 million), The Adventures of Pluto Nash (a woeful $941 average for just $2.1 million) and Showtime (a $5,146 average for a somewhat better $15 million).

This new laffer--in which jobless Murphy gets his laid-off pals to help him babysit a bunch of toddlers, while posh teacher Anjelica Huston tries to prove her schoolroom would be a more suitable environment for the bouncing little brats--didn't debut as strongly as Murphy's most successful comedies, Dr. Dolittle in 1998 (a healthy $10,448 average for $29 million, and an eventual gross of $144.1 million) and 2000's Nutty Professor II: The Klumps ($13,115 average for a big $42.5 million opening and a large $123.3 million total), but proved itself a hit with its targeted audience.

"With Eddie Murphy, people forgive the things that don't work," Tom Sherak, a partner in Revolution Studios, commented to Reuters, as the opening exceeded Industry expectations.

All other debuts this weekend were in limited release.

Top dollar went to Down with Love, which got a heavily hyped sneak release at just one site at the Tribeca Film Festival. That allowed the PG-13 Fox release, a romantic comedy teaming Ewan McGregor and Renée Zellweger, to snag $45,029 prior to its planned general release next week.

At 40 sites The Shape of Things, another Neil LaBute take of the perils of love and starring Paul Rudd, Rachel Weisz, Gretchen Mol and Frederick Weller, averaged $4,331, bringing the R-rated Focus Features release $173,246. Filling somewhat more seats per theater was the R-rated Paramount Classic release Man on the Train, a French fantasy about strangers coveting each others lives, which averaged $8,228 at just five sites for $41,131.

Not doing so well was Only the Strong Survive, the PG-13 Miramax documentary about soul music legends who keep on singing though the road's gotten tougher, which took in only $1,836 per site to earn just $22,035 from 12 locations.

Only two holdovers in the top 10 registered gains. Christopher Guest's '60s folk music mockumentary A Mighty Wind, which, adding 608 theaters, gained 191 percent to $3 million, moved up to seventh place from 14th last weekend. And moving up one spot to ninth, the British femme soccer tale Bend It Like Beckham gained 18 percent from the addition of 80 sites, earning $1.7 million.

Overall, the top 12 films grossed $102.4 million, a drop of 28 percent from last weekend, down 11 percent from this time last year when Spider-Man had a much more dominant second weekend ($71.4 million from a $19,756 average) than X2 has pulled off.

Here is how the top 10 lined up, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations:

1. X2: X-Men United, $40 million
2. Daddy Day Care, $27.6 million
3. The Lizzie McGuire Movie, $7.2 million
4. Identity, $6.5 million
5. Anger Management, $5.7 million
6. Holes, $4.9 million
7. A Mighty Wind, $3 million
8. Malibu's Most Wanted, $2.1 million
9. Bend It Like Beckham, $1.7 million
10. Confidence, $1.5 million

(Originally published May 11, 2003 at 1:25 p.m. PT.)