Weekend Box-Office: March 25-27, 2011

Wimpy
Kid beats hot chicks with guns

And there I was, looking for a
cool-ass unique picture of SUCKER PUNCH to use for this article,
when I realized that a sequel to a family film that I frankly had
barely heard about, had actually beat Zack Snyder’s latest to the
#1 spot…and by quite a bit as well! Wow. I suppose the mostly-negative
reviews for SUCKER didn’t help the film’s cause, but DIARY OF
A WIMPY KID…really?!? Sigh. I guess the marketplace is
looking for more family films these days and less action-packed
films featuring hot chicks with guns. Sigh again.

The DIARY OF A WIMPY KID sequel
even bettered the opening of its predecessor from last year, which
had opened with $22M and ended up with $64M when all was said and
done. This year’s film opens with close to $25M, so it’ll be
interesting to see where it ends up and if we can all look forward
to seeing DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: MORE MONEY PLEASE opening wide in
2012. It’s to note that despite SUCKER scoring only a 20% positive
rating on Rotten Tomatoes, DIARY didn’t fare all that much better
with only
40% of critics recommending it to their followers.

For Zack Snyder, the
"so-so" opening for SUCKER PUNCH represents his 2nd-lowest
launch of all-time, a little above LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS, which
opened with $16M last year. His greatest opening had been 300 with
$70M, followed by WATCHMEN at $55M and DAWN OF THE DEAD with $26M.
Something tells me that his SUPERMAN REBOOT flick will beat all
those openings and then some! (if you haven’t read the news yet, Amy
Adams was cast as Lois Lane today)

Some of the films in the rest
of the top 10 didn’t lose too much of their audience from last
weekend, including last week’s #1 movie, LIMITLESS, which lost
only 20% from last weekend, and remained a steady gainer in 3rd
place. It has earned $41M in the first 10 days of release. THE
LINCOLN LAWYER also seems to be gaining an audience with superb
word-of-mouth, as it too only lost 16% of its audience from last
weekend, and remained in 4th place, just like last week. RANGO
finally dropped to 5th place, but also surpassed the $100M mark in
only its 4th weekend of release. Another $100M-grosser for Johnny
Depp! 

The biggest loser of the
weekend (and the month, actually) was MARS NEEDS MOMS, which lost
59% of its audience from last weekend, and has only earned $19M in
its 3 weeks of release, despite costing a staggering $150M to
produce. The two films to get knocked from the top 10 this weekend
were BEASTLY ($25M) and HALL PASS ($42M), which continued the
Farrelly Brothers streak of sub-$50M grossing comedies going all
the way back to SHALLOW HALL in 2001, which had made $70M. Since
then, they’ve made STUCK ON YOU ($33M), FEVER PITCH ($42M) and THE
HEARTBREAK KID ($36M).

Next weekend sees the release
of three more big flicks including the well-reviewed
INSIDIOUS,
directed by the man who helmed the best SAW movie from the entire
franchise (in my humble opinion), James Wan, as well the latest
animated film for kids called HOP
and the film that’s got me pretty stoked starring Jake Gyllenhaal
and directed by Duncan Jones — the man behind the underrated MOON
— called SOURCE
CODE. So which movie do you think will be in the #1 spot next
weekend? VOTE
HERE!!!