Weekend Box-Office: ‘Think Like a Man’ Repeats, but ‘The Avengers’ are the Big Story

Leap-frogging the competition after a horrible Friday start, Aardman’s The Pirates! Band of Misfits had a solid weekend with the families. Predictions on Thursday were all over the board for this one with numbers ranging from $6.1 – $32 million and the closest prediction coming from a pair of readers with both Rach and wally west predicting a $12 million finish.

Of course, as you’ll soon see, Pirates is in a dogfight for second place as only a couple hundred thousand separate second and fifth place.

No matter how you slice it, though, the studio can still use the “#1 Family Film in America” slogan on their trailers all week.

Last week’s number two very well could move back into that position this week once actuals come out as The Lucky One is just a hair behind Pirates.

Fortunately for this one, however, there aren’t any other sappy romance movies in theaters so no matter where it finishes it can still use the “#1 Sappy Romance Film in America” on their trailers.

Now we can come to what the studio can refer to as “The Most Popular Film in 2012” slogan for one more week as The Hunger Games will soon give way to The Avengers, which will soon surpass its $372.4 million domestic total.

Hey look, it’s the “#2 Romantic Comedy in America”. Eh, they probably don’t want to use that in promoting The Five-Year Engagement, a film that sputtered out this weekend and I’m not entirely sure why. While the film wasn’t the comedy the trailers suggested it would be, I still thought it would bring people into the theater. I guess we should have been a bit wary when Universal brought out that last second red band trailer. It’s never a good sign if you have to go for the raunch at the last second.

The predictions for this one were just as dramatic as those for Pirates! ranging from $8 – $39 million. For the second weekend in a row, Think Like a Man thwarted Laremy’s efforts at picking the #1 film correctly as he doubled Five-Year‘s results with his prediction.

When it comes to the readers, wally west once again ties with another reader’s predictions, this time with anthony caban as they both predicted a $10 million weekend.

I’ve actually read some good things about this latest Jason Statham effort, but I had to skip it for another film this week so I will probably catch it on Blu-ray.

DOA was the new film based on POE. I think it’s time to put a fork in director James McTeigue, either that or get the Wachowskis to ghost direct another film for him.

Audiences clearly like primates more than they like lions as Chimpanzee is almost $4 million ahead of where African Cats ended at the same time last year. I wonder if it’s because of the way they sold the film, using the idea of a narrative rather than presenting it merely as a documentary that intrigued audiences.

As much as I don’t get it, people are still turning out to see The Three Stooges and the audience rating over at RottenTomatoes is 67%, which isn’t too bad. I’m glad this film didn’t turn out to be the stinker I thought it would be, but I’m still not interested in seeing it myself.

Internet hype may have built this one up to heights unattainable. It’s still a decent film, but not the game changer so many people professed it would be.