Box Office: Ride Along retains #1 spot while I, Frankenstein bombs!
This past weekend saw the release of I, Frankenstein starring Aaron Eckhart. Ear-marked to take approximately $20M in it's opening weekend— I, Frankenstein totally stunk the place out. It failed to even bring in half of it's estimation, taking a measly $8.2M— surely giving it the unfortunate title of first bomb of 2014. Ouch!
It's poorly explained premise and derivative fantasy action quite simply didn't appeal with the audience. People opted for a little humour and gave their hard earned money to Ice Cube and Kevin Hart's Ride Along— for the second consecutive weekend.
After setting an all-time January record last weekend, Ride Along fell 49% this weekend but that didn't stop it from retaining it's spot atop the box office standings. Bringing in $21.2M this past weekend helped add to it's total gross of $75.4M— which has been achieved in 10 days. At this rate, Ride Along is on course to reach the $100M target in the next two weeks.
Dropping 43% this past weekend was Mark Wahlberg's Lone Survivor— but it held on to it's second place. So far the Afghanistan war drama has brought in a total of $93.6M and is on pace to surpass fellow Afghanistan drama, Zero Dark Thirty ($95.7M), in the coming week.
With Ride Along and Lone Survivor holding down the top two places at the box office, Universal studios (which distribute both films) have snapped a long standing record. Since February 1994, they haven't had two films occupy the top two spots for two consecutive weeks since the releases of On Deadly Ground and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
North American Box Office: Weekend Top 10 (January 24th-26th)
1. Ride Along $21.2M (2nd week)
2. Lone Survivor $12.6M (5th week)
3. The Nut Job $12.3M (2nd week)
4. Frozen $9M (10th week)
5. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit $8.8M (2nd week)
6. I, Frankenstein $8.2M (1st week)
7. American Hustle $7.1M (7th week)
8. August: Osage County $5M (5th week)
9. The Wolf Of Wall Street $5M (5th week)
10. Devil's Due $2.75M (2nd week)
