1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier- $26.6M/$201.5M
Marvel continues to show dominance as Captain America: The Winter Soldier held on to the top spot in its third week, trumping a new film by Johnny Depp and the powerful faith-based genre. At this point the film has cleared the $200M domestic hurdle and has hit $586M worldwide, far better than the original in both respects.
2. Rio 2- $22.5M/$75.3M
The animated sequel is lagging behind the original slightly on the domestic front, but it continues to do big business internationally where it sits at $199M.
3. Heaven is for Real- $21.5M/$28.5M
Riding the popular wave of Christian-themed films is Heaven is for Real, a Greg Kinnear-led weeper that should have the actor forgetting how badly his Rake series tanked. Of course, it doesn't hurt to open on Good Friday (when many businesses and schools were closed) and Easter weekend. It's probably worth nothing there are three Bible-based movies in the top 10 this week, meaning we're likely to see a lot more of them, because obviously there's a pretty big audience....for now.
4. Transcendence- $11.1M
And the big loser of the week is....generally anything where Johnny Depp isn't Jack Sparrow. Seriously, Depp can't buy a win unless he's dressed as a pirate, and that trend continues with Transcendence, which opened disastrously at $11.5M. Yes, Depp was beaten out by Greg Kinnear this week. Mull over that one. The film boasts some pretty big names on the cast (Morgan Freeman, Rebecca Hall) but the marketing has been awful, failing to pinpoint what it's actually about. Why is Depp all digital and bored looking on those posters? And certainly there's no name value in pumping the name of Wally Pfister, Christopher Nolan's long-time DP making his directorial debut. Basically, this is a sore mark for everybody involved.
5. A Haunted House 2- $9.1M
There was some good-natured rivalry between Marlon Wayans' A Haunted House and the latest Scary Movie film, and that maybe helped bolster the comedy's $18M opening weekend. But there wasn't much of a desire for a sequel, and we see that half of the audiences didn't bother to turn out for A Haunted House 2. Still, at a cost of only $4M, Wayans could probably care less.
6. Draft Day- $5.9M/$19.5M
7. Divergent- $5.75M/$133.9M
8. Oculus- $5.2M/$21.1M
9. Noah- $5M/$93.2M
10. God's Not Dead- $4.8M/$48.3M
In other news, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opened big overseas with $47M, setting the stage for its domestic debut on May 2nd. And Disney dropped another of their nature docs with Bears, earning $5M in the process.
