July 15, 2013 by Vinnie Leduc
Uh-oh. For the third weekend in a row, a big-budget summer movie may be on the road to Flop City, but this latest example at the domestic box office hurts a bit more because Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim is actually quite good. Despite some awesome trailers, favorable reviews, and the biggest debut ever for director/co-writer Del Toro, the mechs-vs.-monsters sci-fi extravaganza lost its opening battle to a couple of family flick sequels and finished in third place.
We’re hoping that Pacific Rim, one of our most anticipated movies of the year, won’t go the way of last year’s Dredd, another acclaimed sci-fi flick that bombed commercially but ended up as a favorite on our list of bests at the end of the year. Pacific Rim‘s initial take of $37.3 million may pale in comparison to its gigantic reported budget of $190 million, but international market grosses have already added an estimated $53 million for a total just shy of half its budget.
After breaking Toy Story 3‘s five-day opening record for an animated movie last week, Despicable Me 2 barely held onto the top spot for the repeat win. Its closest challenger, Adam Sandler’s ensemble comedy Grown Ups 2, trailed by only a couple million. Slipping to fourth in its third weekend was chick cop couple comedy The Heat, and rounding out the top five was Disney’s Fourth of July flop The Lone Ranger, which made just enough to push its Pixar prequel, Monsters University, out of the top five.
Next weekend, Gru and his minions look to become the first movie of 2013 to three-peat at what’s going to be a very crowded domestic box office. Despicable Me 2 should be able to achieve the feat because its biggest rival, DreamWorks Animation’s Turbo, is a new IP that will burn off some numbers with an early Wednesday release. The other new major releases include action comedy sequel RED 2 (a comic book adaptation that’s an honorable mention on our most anticipated list), true horror story The Conjuring, another action comedy comic book adaptation in R.I.P.D., and Kristin Wiig comedy Girl Most Likely.
Here are the numbers for the top five over the weekend via BOM:
- Despicable Me 2 — Weekend Gross: $43.9 million — Total Gross: $228.4 million (#1 last week)
- Grown Ups 2 — Weekend Gross: $41.5 million — Total Gross: $41.5 million (new)
- Pacific Rim — Weekend Gross: $37.3 million — Total Gross: $37.3 million (new)
- The Heat — Weekend Gross: $14.0 million — Total Gross: $112.4 million (#3 last week)
- The Lone Ranger — Weekend Gross: $11.5 million — Total Gross: $71.5 million (#2 last week)
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