Film Weekend Per Total 1 Rio $26,800,000 (-31.7%) $6,976 $81,261,000 2 Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family $25,750,000 $11,254 $25,750,000 3 Water for Elephants $17,500,000 $6,212 $17,500,000 4 Hop $12,461,000 (+16.3%) $3,446 $100,500,000 5 Scream 4 $7,154,000 (-61.7%) $2,159 $31,158,000 6 African Cats $6,400,000 $5,246 $6,400,000 7 Soul Surfer $5,600,000 (-23.0%) $2,500 $28,664,000 8 Insidious $5,384,000 (-20.2%) $2,528 $44,178,000 9 Hanna $5,277,000 (-27.5%) $2,214 $31,718,000 10 Source Code $5,063,000 (-18.5%) $2,143 $44,664,00
[based on early estimates, chart via CHUD]
This year’s Easter weekend box office was up from the past two, which is interesting given that it’s been a pretty down year, and that most of this week’s offerings still sucked. Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family (starring Tyler Perry, based on the novel Tyler Perry by Tyler Perry), had the second weakest opening of the Madea quadrilogy (weakest of the ones where “Madea” was actually in the title), earning $26.8 million for the weekend (behind $41 million for Madea Goes to Jail and $30 for Madea’s Family Reunion) putting it at number two behind Rio. Not incredible numbers, but good considering it probably cost $20 million or less to make, and that Tyler Perry probably scribbled the “script” on cocktail napkins while high-priced hookers changed his diaper. I think Chareth said it best in his weekend preview: “Look, say what you will about Perry’s films being nothing more than lazy, offensive slapstick shoe-horned into an overwrought dramatic narrative, but you gotta admit that they suck.” Call it a modest victory for coonery and buffoonery, anyway (I’m assuming here, it didn’t screen for critics). All I know is that if Tyler Perry is going to keep making these Ernest-style Madea movies (Madea Goes to Jail, Madea Scared Stupid), he should at least have the decency to give her a humorous off-screen foil, a lá Vern. Ooh, idea: he could name her “Quadrilogy.”
Elsewhere, Rio continues to clean up, outpacing 2011’s other top earners, Rango and Hop, at the same point (though they’re about equal in terms of attendance — Rio earned more from higher-priced 3D). This just in: brightly-colored kids movies do well. That Zemeckis’ pointless motion-capture could even screw that up is kind of a feat.
Water for Elephants did slightly better than expectations. I’ll admit again that I enjoyed it, more for the animals and the thirties circus hobo talk than the romance, but at the very least, we can be thankful that, even in an age when Snooki gets paid more than a Pulitzer-winning author for the same appearance, movies based on books aren’t dead. And this one didn’t have any chaste vampires, so there’s that.
Somehow it never occurred to me before now how strange it was that Universal opened their Easter movie (well, their tangentially Easter-related jelly-bean sh*tting CGI bunny movie, anyway) four weeks ago instead of this weekend. There was an “Easter bump” this weekend, so there’s at least some evidence that putting it out early was a better strategy than throwing it out on Easter weekend to collect a huge opening and then watching it fizzle. Elsewhere, Quentin Tarantino was snorting his Easter bump off a prostitute with three titties. So I hear.
Scream 4 is still hurtling towards overall disappointment, while Insidious continues to play. Proof both that some justice still exists in the world, and that expectations for horror movies are pretty low.
[other sources: BoxOfficeMojo, RopeofSilicon]