Rush opened wide this week in 2297 theaters, as Ron Howard tried to sell us the movie-est movie that ever movie’d. Every ad I saw for it I thought Chris Hemsworth was about to turn to the camera and say “Glamour,” as a wind machine blew his romance novel hair like a Creed video. Sadly, America wasn’t really buying, and it only earned a little more than $10 million of its $38 million budget. Poor Ron Howard. Maybe his buddy Brian Grazer can cheer him up with some cuh-caine (B-Graze loves the Bolivian).
Rush expanded in to 2,297 theaters this weekend and took third place with $10.3 million. Among sports dramas, that’s about half of Moneyball‘s $20 million start, and is also lower than Secretariat‘s $12.7 million debut. It’s hard to call this a good opening, though it also would have been unreasonable to expect much more—while the marketing has been strong, Formula 1 racing isn’t of particular interest to most Americans.
The audience for Rush was 52 percent male and 53 percent over the age of 40, and it received a good “A-” CinemaScore. Add in strong reviews (88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), and it’s likely that this holds well over the next few weeks. [BoxOfficeMojo]
Turns out America only likes vroom cars if Paul Walker is driving them. Or if Vin Diesel uses them to kill a plane. Formula 1 cars? Pff, you probably can’t even put truck nutz on those.
Elsewhere, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 made decent money because kids, and Don Jon made nine million, but only cost six. FUN FACT OF THE WEEK: We’re the Millers has outearned The Wolverine, and over a shorter time period. No one really knows how the hell that happened. My guess is, Jennifer Aniston will get to make 10 more bad rom-coms because of it, and when those bomb we’ll find out it was really Sudeikis magic all along.
[via Boxofficemojo]
CHRIS HEMSWORTH: I would give my laugh for racing!
NIKI LAUDA: I don’t want. Your life.
(what I imagine Rush was like)