I spent Friday reading every Paul Blart 2 review in existence, and almost all mentioned the non-existant response from the audience. Nonetheless, while it couldn’t catch the Furious 7 juggernaut, Paul Blart 2 still opened with a respectable $24 million. That was just behind Paul Blart 1’s $31.8 million in 2009. America loves Kevin James.
Of course, the original Paul Blart wound up earning $146.3 million total, which was over four-and-a-half times its opening weekend. It’s hard to imagine that the sequel performs similarly: it has a rare zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, weak word-of-mouth (“B-” CinemaScore), and a more competitive upcoming schedule (specifically, Avengers). [HollywoodReporter]
Let me rephrase: America loves to forget that they don’t love Kevin James. 2 Blart 2 Furious has dropped to a 53% “liked it” rating from audiences. And with 18 more reviews counted since we last checked, its Bucky Larson is still holding strong (even stronger than Bucky Larson, in fact, with three more reviews counted). Not that the studio cares. Blart 2 reportedly only cost $30 million to make (editor’s note: how the hell did Blart 2 cost $30 million to make?), and that’s not counting how much they made on product placement from the Wynn casino and Apple watch.
Elsewhere, Furious 7 has already crossed $1.1 billion worldwide, as was expected.
Furious 7 fell 51 percent to an estimated $29.1 million. In comparison, the last two Fast movies dropped 44 percent and 37 percent at the same point. To date, Furious 7 has earned $294.4 million; it could still reach $350 million, but would need to hold up well against Avengers: Age of Ultron in two weeks. [BoxOfficeMojo]
In terms of domestic box office, Furious 7 currently sits at a modest 53rd all time, while in terms of worldwide, it’s already at number 7. Not accounting for inflation, obviously. It just went from mission impossible to mission in-freakin-sanity.
Also opening this week was Unfriended, a microbudget, found-footage type thingy from Blumhouse productions (they of The Purge fame), which took $16 million, “the biggest debut for an original horror movie since The Conjuring in July 2013.”
The film unfolds completely over a teenager’s computer screen as she and her friends are stalked by an unseen figure seeking vengeance for a shaming video that led to another girl killing herself. Nearly 75 percent of the audience was under the age of 25, while females made up 60 percent of ticket buyers, not unusual for the genre. [HollywoodReporter]
It was a great place to meet teen girls, apparently.
Still, the movie could fall off quickly in the coming weeks. While it has a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, word-of-mouth is poor (“C” CinemaScore), and the movie’s younger audience (74 percent under 25) can be unreliable after opening weekend. Look for this to ultimately crawl to $40 million. [BoxOfficeMojo]
Unfriended actually managed pretty decent reviews. Not that that’s going to stop me from continuing to bitch that it got 1,000 more theaters right out of the gate than It Follows played its entire run, which makes me want to slug a fancy bird like Paul Blart. You think dumb teens wouldn’t have seen that one too? Just don’t tell them about all the good reviews. Teens are very gullible.