Turns out Fifty Shades of Grey's massive success was merely a midday quickie. The film plummeted 73% from last week, earning $23.2M as audience curiosity has already worn off. This shouldn't be much of a surprise, really, as these kinds of "event" movies are always frontloaded to an incredible degree. And given that critical reaction to the film has been tepid at best, word-of-mouth wasn't going to sustain it. Not that Universal and Focus Features care at this point with $480M already in the bank and a pair of sequels on the way.
2. Kingsman: The Secret Service- $17.5M/$67.1M
To see just how important strong reviews and solid word-of-mouth matters, look no further than Kingsman: The Secret Service which slipped only 51%. Along with its international numbers there is more than enough reason to justify those talks of a sequel which may or may not see the return of Colin Firth.
3. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water- $15.5M/$125.1M
4. McFarland, USA- $11.3M
Disney, Kevin Costner, and inspirational sports dramas; there will always be a market out there for a film like McFarland USA which combines all three of those things. Unfortunately, the market turned out to be pretty small this time around, at least by Disney standards. Costner should be used to these kinds of mediocre openings, though, as he's had a string of them over the last couple of years. Maybe the "white guy helps underprivileged Hispanic athletes" plot was somewhat undercut by Costner's dreadful race-relations movie, Black or White, which is still out there stinking up theaters.
5. The DUFF- $11M
Speaking of movies there will always be a place for, the high school comedy The DUFF performed better than expected with $11M. The cheapie comedy features no big name stars, but tapped into social media and the CW crowd (star Robbie Amell is a fixture on the network) to lure its young audiences to the multiplex. Plus the reviews turned out to be pretty good (including my own), especially for star Mae Whitman who will hopefully get more leads out of this.
6. American Sniper- $9.6M/$319.6M
7. Hot Tub Time Machine 2- $5.8M
Oh, so nobody wanted to get in the water for Hot Tub Time Machine 2? That's a shock. Not really. The first film released five years ago (!!!) and was a mid-level success at best, hardly the kind of film demanding a sequel. Take away the movie's biggest star, John Cusack, and there was even less reason to be interested in the time travel comedy, which got killed by critics. Maybe this will be a lesson to studio heads that not every moderately successful movie needs a sequel. If there had been any analysis done on the demand for a sequel they would have known it was a bad idea.
8. Jupiter Ascending- $3.6M/$39.5M
Yeah, it's still doing terrible, but at least the Wachowskis can say Jupiter Ascending surpassed $100M worldwide. Of course it cost $175M....
9. The Imitation Game- $2.5M/$83.9M
10. Paddington- $2.2M/$67.6M
