With a $110 million budget, San Andreas opening at $54.5 million is the best opening for Dwayne Johnson in a non-Fast and Furious movie. It’s also a very strong opening, especially if compared to last year’s Into the Storm, which was also a New Line release, and only managed $47.6 million for its entire domestic run. You could even look to 2009’s 2012, which was budgeted at $200 million and opened with $65.2 million. In those terms, San Andreas is doing just fine, especially with international dollars expected to be quite high.
San Andreas‘ longevity domestically will be interesting as well as it doesn’t have much competition next weekend, but will obviously lose most of its audience to Jurassic World in a couple weeks. The “A-” CinemaScore suggests it will have some positive word of mouth and may finally prove Johnson is a box office star… but then again, people really eat up these disaster flicks if there is any kind of remotely recognizable face in the lead.
In second is Pitch Perfect 2 in its third weekend, dropping 52%, bringing in $14.8 million with a cume of $147 million at this point. Also holding over for a third weekend is Mad Max: Fury Road, which dropped 42.5%, bringing in $14.1 million as its cume is now up to $116.4 million overall.
Narrowly edging out Mad Max for third is Tomorrowland, which has already had its impact over at Disney as the Mouse House hit the brakes on Tron 3. The $190 million budgeted feature dropped 56.7% in its second weekend, bringing in only $14.3 million as its domestic cume is now $63.6 million.
Scoring a “B-” CinemaScore from opening day audiences, Cameron Crowe‘s Aloha scored $9.6 million, falling just short of the top ten. Most short-minded online “critics” and “writers” are doing their very best to prove the power of their mighty wit by slamming this one as hard as possible, but while it isn’t necessarily a film I would rush to recommend, it’s not the disaster these yokels are making it out to be.
Finally, Poltergeist dropped 64% in its second weekend for $8 million and it’s likely to never be heard from again once Insidious: Chapter 3 hits theaters this coming Friday.
In other news, Furious 7 may have dropped out of the domestic top ten, but it just crossed the $1.5 billion mark at the global box office and is only $12 million shy of passing 2012’s The Avengers. Did anyone see that coming? Meanwhile, Avengers: Age of Ultron is now in 6th at the all-time global box office with $1.32 billion.
Next weekend sees the release of Insidious: Chapter 3 and Spy as horror and comedy will battle for the top spot and my money is on Melissa McCarthy and comedy, she seems to be able to do no wrong nowadays.
