Two of young Hollywood’s biggest stars beat out a grizzled industry veteran at the box office this weekend — but just barely.
Jake Gyllenhaal’s cop drama “End of Watch” and Jennifer Lawrence’s horror vehicle “House at the End of the Street” tied for the No. 1 weekend position, each grossing a decent $13 million.
Clint Eastwood’s baseball drama, “Trouble With the Curve,” didn’t hit a home run with opening weekend audiences, as the movie debuted with a slightly lower sum of $12.7 million.
The big weekend loser, however, was “Dredd 3D,” the science-fiction action film based on a British comic strip that was able to muster up only $6.3 million in sales. It barely performed better than “The Master,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s drama that played this weekend in only 788 theaters, while “Dredd” screened in roughly 2,500 locations. After debuting with record-breaking numbers in five cinemas last weekend, the Weinstein Co. film about a Scientology-esque cult leader took in an impressive $5 million upon its nationwide expansion.
For the fourth consecutive weekend, ticket sales were down compared with the same period in 2011. Receipts dropped 25% this weekend when stacked up with the same three-day period last year.
“End of Watch” received the most positive critical reviews of any of the weekend’s new wide releases, and audiences liked it best as well. Those who saw the film assigned it an average grade of A-minus, according to the market research firm CinemaScore. Eastwood’s “Curve” received a B-plus grade, while “Dredd 3D” and “House at the End of the Street” each earned a B.
“End of Watch” stars Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña as LAPD officers who form a close bond as they work the streets of South-Central L.A. together. The film was financed by Emmett/Furla Films and Exclusive Media, but Open Road Films acquired North American distribution rights for about $2 million.
The movie is the latest of Gyllenhaal’s low-to-mid-budget films to perform modestly at the domestic box office. Last year, the 31-year-old actor’s sci-fi thriller “Source Code” …
Read more: LA Times
