Weekend Box Office: ‘Insidious 2’ Opens With Massive $41 Million

The first Insidious film grossed $13.2 million on its opening weekend and went on to gross over $54 million domestically. Insidious: Chapter 2, which released this weekend and was budgeted at a mere $5 million, more than tripled the first film’s opening, bringing in $41 million and has the distinction of being the biggest opening for a horror/genre film in September and has the second largest September opening for any film ever.

The demographics show the ratio of male to female audience members was split almost straight down the middle and while the reviews were largely negative, the CinemaScore was a satisfactory “B+”. Clearly it will top the $54 million the first film made domestically, but is also likely to squash the $97 million it made worldwide, and all on a $5 million budget. Impressive stuff. Director James Wan is a studio favorite this year with this and The Conjuring, wonder if he can make Fast and Furious 7 for pennies as well.

I have to also quickly mention the reader prediction results for this film as Athar‘s prediction of $40.6 million was the very first prediction on the board and, along with Matt Taylor, was the closest prediction on the board. Everyone should have followed suit, nice work you two, especially Athar for getting that prediction in so quick. The current prediction results are all listed below.

Coming in second is Luc Besson‘s dark mafia comedy, The Family, which also suffered largely negative reviews and opened to $14.5 million, which sounds about right all things considered. Granted, it has Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, but neither are a draw to the target demographic filling theaters nowadays and the “C” CinemaScore tells me we probably shouldn’t expect to see it in the top ten for longer than one more week.

There isn’t any good news for Vin Diesel and Riddick as the third film in the franchise dipped 63.2% in its second weekend, dropping from its #1 perch to third, bringing its total to $31.3 million.

In other news, Lee Daniels’ The Butler finally crossed the $100 million mark domestically. Lionsgate’s Spanish-language stunner Instructions Not Included added another $4.2 million to its total from 933 theaters.

Next weekend, Prisoners and Battle of the Year 3D are the major wide releases while Rush hits limited theaters before expanding the following week nationwide. Care to make any early predictions on the two going wide? How big can Battle of the Year go? Stomp the Yard opened with $21.8 million in 2007, while Step Up Revolution only managed $11.7 million last year. Which one is a closer comparison?

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