Staff Writer
Box offices in the US and Canada were swamped recently with Ride Along, starring Kevin Hard and Ice Cube, placed first for the second weekend running. The boddy comedy brought in nearly $22 million for its parent company.
In other news, I, Frankenstein crashed and burned. This film is based off of the Mary Shelley gothic classic, but followed a similar style to I, Robot in its approach. The film, backed by Lions Gate Entertainment, only brought in $8.3M, ranking it sixth place in recent polls. Statements revealed the film had over $60M in budget.
But that won’t rain on Universal’s parade. Combined with its other recent film, Lone Survivor, Universal soared to the top of the charts. It now holds the crown for domestic sales in 2014. Of course, the lead actors might have had something to do with it: Mark Wahlberg in Lone Survivor and Hart in Ride Along.
Phil Contrino, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com, remarked, “Universal has to be thrilled by the way they’ve started the year.”
Ride Along plays off of a similar tale: a fiancé struggling to get approval from the in-laws to be. Hart’s character agrees to shadow his fiance’s brother in order to prove himself. Needless to say, hilarity ensues as the two men try to come to an understanding.
With a 73% from Rotten Tomatoes, the film was projected to make $20.5M.
Compare this to I, Frankenstein, which follows Adam Frankenstein’s fight in a war between two clans of immortals. With Stuart Beattie (writer for Pirates of the Caribbean films) writing and directing, this film was slated to earn $15.3M.
Nicolas Rapold of the New York Times reviewed the film, and found it lacking. “Beattie’s solemn, ho-hum film largely shuns Shelley’s anguished creator as a character and turns his lonely monster into a football between the forces of good and evil.”
With Lone Survivor holding second place for the fifth week in a row, Universal has made approx. $152M, and holds 21% of the box offices across the US and Canada.
Open Road Films’ Nut Job came in third with $12.3M as of its second weekend. The film, which centers around Surly the squirrel trying to survive in the urban jungle of the city, has brought in $40.3M in domestic theaters.
And the former queen of the box office, Frozen, drops to fourth place with $9M. The Walt Disney Co. film earned $347.8M in domestic sales.
Overall, the recent top ten films have brought revenue up by 13% to $92.1M according to the reports of the year-earlier period.
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