There is absolutely no sugar coating it, with an $11.2 million opening, a ‘C+” CinemaScore, 19% at RottenTomatoes and a $100 million budget, audiences and the majority of critics have roundly dismissed Transcendence. While I personally don’t agree with the negative verdict, there is no escaping the fact this three-day opening is more than $15 million less than the $25.6 million tracking. I have no idea when the last time a film,’s tracking was that far off the end result.
What disappoints me most about this is director Wally Pfister will be judged harshly after such an ambitious film and due to critics regularly comparing him to Christopher Nolan, whom he served under as cinematographer for so long. Transcendence is far more interesting than it has been given credit, but it appears no one is paying attention.
In first place, for the third weekend in a row, is Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier with $26.6 million. The latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has now grossed $201.5m domestically and another $385.1 million internationally. That’s $586.6 million worldwide, which moves Captain America 2 ahead of Iron Man 2 as the fifth highest grossing worldwide release from the MCU.
In second, dropping only 43% is Fox’s Rio 2 with a solid $22.5 million as it is now up to $75 million domestically and still has a lot of time before How to Train Your Dragon 2 flies into theaters on June 13.
Coming in third is one of the three religious movies keeping audiences in the top ten as Noah and God’s Not Dead battle it out for that number nine slot. Heaven is for Real opened in 2,417 theaters and ended the three-day weekend with $21.5 million, embarrassing Transcendence by more than $10 million, despite giving the Depp vehicle more over a thousand theater cushion.
Considering it was only made for a reported $3 million and it doesn’t appear they spent a lot marketing it, while A Haunted House 2 may have opened half as big as the first film, $9.1 million is still three times the budget. Audiences, however, don’t seem as if they’ll be rushing to tell their friends to see it given the “B-” CinemaScore.
Disneynature’s Bears came in with the lowest opening yet for the studio’s nature docs with $4.7 million, but I doubt there are any plans to slow the development of these things as Monkey Kingdom is already set for April 17, 2015.
On a smaller scale, John Turturro‘s Fading Gigolo, featuring Turturro as a gigolo and Woody Allen as his pimp, scored $198,000 from five theaters for a $39,680 per theater average.
Next weekend’s releases include the Paul Walker actioner Brick Mansions, the Cameron Diaz and Leslie Mann comedy The Other Woman and the latest horror film, The Quiet Ones. What do you think? Other Woman topping the box office?
