Weekend Box-Office: July 22-24, 2011

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Captain
America…f*ck yeah!

The film itself received
positive reviews from both critics
and fans
alike (currently sitting at 7.4/10 on Movie Fan Central), and so
it wasn’t a major shock to see CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST
AVENGER steal the top spot away from the last HARRY POTTER movie
after only one week in 1st place, but still a little
surprising. There was obviously no way for POTTER to continue its
record pace, as it lost 71% of its audience from last weekend,
which under normal circumstances might be a major worry, but when
that number comes only one week after breaking
the record
for biggest opening ever…it’s not so bad.

And so how does CAPTAIN AMERICA
compare with the rest of the superhero movies of the summer? Well,
according to the stats below (opening weekend figure, followed by
total in parentheses), it had the biggest opening amongst them
all, and if the good "word of mouth" keeps up, may even
beat THOR as the highest-grossing superhero movie of the summer.
We’ll have to wait and see though…

CAPTAIN
AMERICA: $65.8M

THOR: $65.7M ($180M)
GREEN LANTERN: $53M ($114M)
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS: $55.1M ($144M)

As for the "other"
new movie opening this past weekend, FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, opened
in 3rd place with a reasonable $18.5M, although its reviews
weren’t as unanimous as in CAPTAIN AMERICA’s case, as it’s
currently averaging only 5.7/10
on the MFC
. It’s to note that the similarly themed NO STRINGS
ATTACHED starring Mila Kunis’ co-stars from BLACK SWAN and
"That ’70s Show" opened with $19.7M back in January.
That film ended up with $71M when all was said and done though.
Not sure FRIENDS will make that much, as it obviously has a lot
more competition right now.

In the meantime, Michael Bay’s
latest TRANSFORMERS film has become Paramount International’s
highest-grossing movie of all-time, as it crossed the half a billion
dollar mark this past weekend (it’s now at $556M overall). It’s to
note that even though HARRY POTTER broke the record for biggest
opening weekend ever, TRANSFORMERS still sits atop the 2011
domestic box-office charts
with $325M as compared to POTTER’s
$273M. So there’s still a $52M gap between them. Will be
interesting to see if Potter can make up the difference in the
coming weeks.

The two films to get booted
from the top 10 this week were LARRY CROWNE ($34M) which may turn
out to be the most "under the radar" film ever released
starring either Tom Hanks or Julia Roberts, and SUPER 8 ($124M)
which turned into one of the more successful "original"
movies of the summer.

Next weekend sees the release
of three major movies including the Steve Carrel, Ryan Gosling,
Emma Stone and Julianne Moore-starring CRAZY
STUPID LOVE
, as well as Jon Favreau’s latest directorial
film starring Indiana Jones and James Bond entitled COWBOYS
& ALIENS
(oh, and some chick named Olivia
Wilde
) and….the SMURFS.
Now that it appears as though no other major film will beat either
TRANSFORMERS or HARRY POTTER to the overall top spot of the
summer, which of the two films do you think will ultimately end up
with the summer’s box-office belt? VOTE
HERE!!!

# MOVIE TITLE WKND $ TOTAL $
1 Captain America: The First Avenger $65.8 M NEW
2 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 $48.1 M $274.2 M
3 Friends with Benefits $18.5 M NEW
4 Transformers: Dark of the Moon $12 M $325.8 M
5 Horrible Bosses $11.7 M $82.4 M
6 Cars 2 $5.7 M $176.4 M
7 Zookeeper $8.7 M $59.2 M
8 Winnie the Pooh $5.1 M $17.6 M
9 Bad Teacher $2.6 M $94.4 M
10 Midnight in Paris $1.9 M $44.9 M
Source: BoxOfficeMojo.com