'Ant-Man' Beats Out Adam Sandler's 'Pixels' to Hold Onto Number One Spot
Marvel's latest offering enjoyed its second weekend on top the weekend box office beating out newcomer Pixels starring box office dud Adam Sandler.
By Friday morning, industry experts expected Pixels to drift off after decent previews on Thursday, and their predictions rang true. By Saturday, the Marvel movie enjoyed a 36% spike in audiences figures which catapulted the movie back into first place and it never looked back. Whilst Pixels dropped 8% after Saturday matinees, it couldn't quite catch Ant-Man come Sunday.
Before the weekend started it was expected that Ant-Man would fend off the competition of Pixels, which was banking on being an attractive and fun alternative. According to statistics, Pixels did fare well with audiences under the age of 18. Although second place isn't a bad performance per say, Pixels was, in the grand scheme of things, an opening weekend disappointment. Given its budget is somewhere north of $50M — which isn't a huge production cost given today's blockbuster budgets — taking $24M on opening weekend is a weak effort and another gut wrenching blow for Adam Sandler's fledging career as a bankable asset for studios.
Two other new releases hit theatres this weekend with Southpaw and Paper Towns having solid enough starts with $16 million and $12 million, respectively. Both movies aren't expected to be smash hits but boxing movies and teen dramas tend to become stronger as their theatrical runs gather momentum, especially if audiences connect.
Third place went to Minions which dropped again this weekend with $22.9M taking its total gross to $261M to date. Of course, those are good numbers and the movie has already been certified as a hit, but given how much its numbers have dropped over the past two weekends, it's looking more and more unlikely that the yellow critters will hit their projected target of a $400M domestic haul.
top 10 U.S. Weekend Box Office
1. Ant-Man - $24.9 million
2. Pixels - $24 million
3. Minions - $22.9 million
4. Trainwreck - $17.2 million
5. Southpaw - $16.7 million
6. Paper Towns - $12.6 million
7. Inside Out - $7.4 million
8. Jurassic World - $7.1 million
9. Mr. Holmes - $2.8 million
10. Terminator Genisys - $2.4 million
