November 18, 2013 by Vinnie Leduc
In a battle of sequels that was much closer than most had expected, Thor: The Dark World continued its reign atop the domestic box office over the weekend after its dominating debut the previous weekend. The superhero sequel has already grossed more worldwide than any other Marvel movie except for The Avengers and Iron Man 3, but the big story stateside is how well The Best Man Holiday did as the only new major release. A sequel to 1999’s The Best Man, which is credited for sparking a wave of uplifting African-American movies, The Best Man Holiday scored the fifth-highest opening ever for an R-rated rom-com and in three days has nearly matched the entire box office gross of the original. It was about $6.5 million shy of a stunning upset over the Thor sequel and instead settled for second place.
In their third weekends of release, geriatric buddy comedy Last Vegas and 3D computer-animated buddy comedy Free Birds switched places again for third and fourth place, respectively. Although I shot down Free Birds as a flop a couple of weeks ago, the movie has been holding well and is about another week away from recouping its estimated $55 million budget. Last Vegas has also been holding well and had already grossed back its $28 million budget the previous weekend.
Dropping to fifth after a couple weekends at the runner-up spot was Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa in its fourth weekend. The spin-off comedy should cross the $100 million mark by next week. Alfonso Cuarón’s 3D sci-fi thriller Gravity has been floating just outside the top five for the previous two weekends, but it also just overtook Fast & Furious 6 to become the fifth-highest grossing 2013 film at the domestic box office. It has a shot at surpassing Monsters University for fourth, but it’ll probably fall short of Man of Steel for third.
The upcoming weekend introduces Vince Vaughn comedy Delivery Man and an honorable mention for one of our most anticipated movies of the year, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The odds are ever in Katniss & Co.’s favor to destroy the rest of the competition, and the only question is how historic its opening feast will be.
Here are the numbers for the top five over the weekend via BOM:
- Thor: The Dark World — Weekend Gross: $36.6 million — Total Gross: $145.1 million (#1 last week)
- The Best Man Holiday — Weekend Gross: $30.1 million — Total Gross: $30.1 million (new)
- Last Vegas — Weekend Gross: $8.4 million — Total Gross: $46.5 million (#4 last week)
- Free Birds — Weekend Gross: $8.1 million — Total Gross: $42.0 million (#3 last week)
- Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa — Weekend Gross: $7.4 million — Total Gross: $90.0 million (#2 last week)
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