Box Office Report - April 16-18
Sun, April 18, 2010 
Courtesy of Box Office Mojo:
1. How to Train Your Dragon - $20 million
2. Kick-Ass - $19.7 million
3. Date Night - $17.3 million
4. Death at a Funeral - $17 million
5. Clash of the Titans - $15.7 million
6. The Last Song - $5.8 million
7. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too? - $4.1 million
8. Hot Tub Time Machine - $3.5 million
9. Alice in Wonderland - $3.5 million
10. The Bounty Hunter - $3.2 million
Oh boy, it looks like another too-close-to-call weekend at the box office. Actuals will come in tomorrow, but for the moment, it looks like Dreamworks' How to Train Your Dragon, in its fourth weekend, astonishingly managed to fly past this weekend's new releases and land back at the #1 spot, dropping only 19% from last weekend with a total of $20 million. With a domestic total so far of $158.6 million (and a worldwide total of $320 million), this looks to be riding its great reviews and strong word-of-mouth straight into the summer movie season.
But even if it does climb back into the #1 spot tomorrow, Lionsgate's Kick-Ass seems to have gotten, well, its ass kicked. The Matthew Vaughn superhero film opened with a disapointing $19.7 million, which was well below estimates for the weekend. However, Kick-Ass has shown strong box office momentum after less-than-stellar openings overseas, so it's likely that will be the case here as well. With an estimated budget of around $30 million, the movie is ultimately going to be a hit, even if it doesn't break box office records.
Date Night, last weekend's almost-winner for the #1 spot, dropped just 31%, making $17.3 mllion and bringing its total to $49.2 million. It's in the #3 spot for now, however...
Death at a Funeral, this weekend's other new release, finished the weekend with an estimated $17 million. So it's possible that it could switch places with Date Night once the actuals come in. Like Kick-Ass, Death at a Funeral also came in below expectations, but it did have the highest per-screen average ($6933) out of any other movie in the top 10.
All of the new releases proved to be too much for Clash of the Titans, which dropped 41% to fifth place with $15.7 million. It's now at a domestic total of $133 million.
Not too many surprises in the rest of the top 10. Alice in Wonderland is now at a worldwide total of $827 million, making it the biggest film of the year so far (well, at least until Iron Man 2 hits theaters).
Avatar, which for some reason got a re-release at select AMC theaters this weekend, added another $1.1 million to the gazillions it already made the first time around (which was what, last week?).
So will Kick-Ass fight its way into first place? Stay tuned...
Reader Comments (5)
I had a feeling that Kick-Ass had been over hyped by a lot of sites, 20 million doesn't surprise me at all, world wide opening of 33 million however is close to what I predicted, even though I was basing those predictions on domestic numbers only.
I wonder how word of mouth will work out for this movie...
And for How to Train Your Dragon to come back like that, wow, good for them. Don't expect to see that again next weekend though. The Losers will most likely take the number one spot, and then the following weekend expect NOES to make big opening numbers as well.
But sadly its all over, for all of them when the blockbuster Iron Man 2 hits May 7th.
Check back tomorrow for the box office actual numbers and see how I did with the predictions.
Kick-Ass isn't doing terribly, considering its budget. Ultimately it's going to wind up profitable, and it's got enough of a fanbase that it will do really well on video. It's not a blockbuster, but I think it will wind up successful. I haven't seen it yet, I may check it out this week.
I'm sure this is the last #1 weekend for How to Train Your Dragon, I'm amazed that it got back to first place at all. It deserves though, it's really a great film.
I liked both Kick-Ass and Dragon, the only difference is, one you can take your kids to and the other has kids shooting people.
33million WW its already succseful, its made more then the budget, theyre good
The studio only receives between 60-70 percent of the gross, depending on the deal they made with the cinemas and what their marketing budget and everything else is it works out to even less.
I don't doubt that Kick-Ass will be a hit, but it needs to make at least 50 million at the box office just to break even. That's not to say that the video release won't bring in a substantial amount as well as other merchandise like Jen pointed out.