This weekend’s box office report appears tremendously weak to say the least. Despite the arrival of four new films in addition to an expansion for The Master, the top ten as a whole look like a miserable failure as none of Hollywood’s latest is going to come close to the $20 million mark.
Friday’s results have House at the End of the Street battling it out for first with End of Watch and Trouble with the Curve. The initial winner looks to be House at the End of the Street by less than a 1% margin over the Jake Gyllenhaal-starrer with $4.64 million versus $4.60 million. Trouble with the Curve only mustered a third place $4.2 million which is below what studios predicted going into release.
The story of the day might be the terrible performance by Dredd 3D which is yet another failed actioner in the month of September. Since the genre traditionally suffers the blues and has been seeing a lot of red as of late, this cannot be too shocking, but a first day take of $2.2 million is never acceptable for a $45-50 million movie regardless of whether we see it coming a mile away. What makes things worse is that the Pete Travis-directed feature found tremendously positive reviews, leaving no legitimate excuse for the disaster.
While indies are seldom sexy to talk about in these reports, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master expanded to just under 800 theaters this weekend following its record-breaking five-theater open. On the day, the Scientology themed movie found $1.4 million which brings its total to a fairly unexpected $2.4 million.