Admit it, most of you are surprised Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did so well. I’m sure some of you expected big things, but the easy money was on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy scoring a second weekend win and while it finished pretty much just where it was expected, Ninja Turtles defied that $36 million tracking to the tune of $65 million this weekend to go along with a rather tame “B” CinemaScore.
Looking over the reader predictions, no one thought Turtles would amount to this much, the highest prediction being that of PJ Edwards at $60.2 million. Then again, when you come in $29 million over tracking, it’s hard to predict that correctly. The film added another $28.7 million internationally from 19 overall markets.
Guardians scored $41.5 million, bringing its domestic cume to $175.9 million in just two days as it’s on its way to becoming the highest grossing domestic release of 2014, currently $84 million shy of Captain America: The Winter Soldier‘s $259.5 million haul.
In third was New Line’s Into the Storm, opening with $18 million in the face of dismal reviews and really not much else to talk about. The “B” CinemaScore suggest a 55% or so drop next week and by the end of August it will be as if it was never even here.
The best CinemaScore among this weekend’s new releases went to the Helen Mirren-led The Hundred-Foot Journey, which finished fourth with $11.1 million and an “A” CinemaScore from opening day audiences.
In a continuing downward domestic trend, the fifth Step Up film premiered this weekend. Step Up All In brought back characters from previous installments once again and opened to a franchise low $6.5 million. No worries for Summit, this is a franchise that has long been taking advantage of the international market where it’s already up to $37.7 million, rather than the domestic one. These U.S. dollars simply serve as the cherry on top.
Finally, as it slowly continues to expand, Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood added another $2 million this weekend from 507 theaters, bringing its cume to $10.6 million so far. Let’s keep this one going folks and maybe it will get a little bit of that awards attention it deserves.
Next weekend sees the release of Let’s Be Cops, The Expendables 3 and The Giver and I can’t tell if we should expect much of anything from any of them. It’s been an interesting August already with two massive overperformers so far, will we see another one next weekend?
