Cinderella Found her Glass Slipper to Race Past Liam Neeson To Take #1 Spot on March 13-15 Box Office Weekend
Finding her glass slipper, Cinderella left Liam Neeson, Run All Night huffing and puffing at the finish line to grab the #1 Spot. The classic retelling of the renowned fairy tale revived box office from last week slump with an impressive $67.8 million.
That debut is higher than last year’s fairy tale smash, Maleficent ($69.4 million), illustrating that this is a genre still worth investing in. It’s no wonder the studio is so keen on adapting their animation library to live-action, with movies like Beauty and the Beast planned in the coming years. Cinderella‘s monumental success can probably be attributed to two factors. One, the critical reception was largely positive, as many pundits praised how director Kenneth Branagh brought the story to the modern age while staying true to the spirit of the narrative. Compared to the other films currently playing, it certainly had an edge in that department. “This was a strong protagonist and an aspirational character,” said Hollis. “We took the high bar reached by the classic animated film and built on it. This will now be something that complements the original.” The film wasn’t in 3D, but it did get a nice boost from other premium formats. Imax represents 7% of “Cinderella’s” gross, and premium large formats comprised 8% of the box office results. “Cinderella” couldn’t match the $116.1 million debut of “Alice in Wonderland,” but it did surpass the $69.4 million premiere of “Maleficent.” That’s impressive considering that, despite featuring Cate Blanchett and “Downton Abbey’s” Lily James, “Cinderella” lacked a star on the level of Johnny Depp or Angelina Jolie to bring in crowds. It also cost half of the roughly $200 million each that Disney spent producing those fantasies.
“Cinderella” was a juggernaut overseas, picking up an estimated $62.4 million, $25 million of which came from China. The film opened in about 60% of the international marketplace, including such major territories as Russia, Italy, Mexico and Germany. At #2 this weekend is Run All Night , which opened with a low $11 million. It may be a sign that the “Liam Neeson with a gun” shtick is getting old, since these numbers are even lower than last year’s A Walk Among the Tombstones ($12.7 million), which went down as one of the actor’s most recent box office disappointments. It also failed to reach the heights of Neeson’s previous collaborations with director Jaume Collet-Serra, who he worked with on modest hits Unknown ($63.6 million) and Non-Stop ($92.1 million). It also doesn’t look like Run All Night will be able to maintain strong legs as it continues its domestic run. The critical consensus is that it’s better than Taken 3, but isn’t exactly the next action classic. That muddled word-of-mouth will make it difficult for casual moviegoers to give this one a chance in the coming weeks, especially with other genre titles on the horizon. Perhaps it’s a good thing Neeson is stepping away from action soon.
The #3 film is Kingsman: The Secret Service, which continues its impressive run with $6.2 million. The spy/comedy has been a strong hold since it opened over a month ago, and has now accumulated $107.3 million domestically in five weeks of release. Will Smith newest film seems to be losing its focus as it slips two place to comes in at #4 with $5.8 million, which ups its domestic total to $44 million. It is inching towards covering its $50 million budget from U.S. grosses, but has already cleared production costs thanks to its global revenue. Falling to #5 is last week’s champion, Chappie, (Read Review) which made $5.8 million in its second weekend. Though we were more forgiving of Neill Blomkamp’s latest than most , the overall reception has been that this one is worth skipping in theaters. Viewers have followed that advice, as Chappie has made only $23.3 million domestically.
After two weeks of lagging behind 2014’s box office results, “Cinderella” helped lift domestic ticket sales more than 16% over the year-ago period to top out at $133 million. The key was providing some fresh all-ages fare to a marketplace that had been dominated by adult films such as “Fifty Shades of Grey” and “Focus.” “It’s been an R-rated world at the box office, and for families this was a dream come true,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Rentrak. “They were sitting on sidelines and waiting for a family friendly weekend.” As “Cinderella” proves, dreams do come true. See Last Weekend Chappie takes Number #1 Spot at One of the Worst Weekend in 2015 in March 6-8 Box Weekend |