Despicable Me 2 remained king of the box office for a second straight weekend. Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim fell short of expectations and failed to put up colossal numbers, instead getting out-muscled by the animated family flick and Adam Sandler’s first ever sequel, Grown Ups 2.
Despite being savagely ravaged by critics, Grown Ups 2 opened to a stellar $42.5 million to take second place at the box office. Audiences defied critics’ reviews, giving the film a B- CinemaScore, same as the 2010 original. The sequel, costing a relatively modest $80 million to produce, is a much-needed win for Sandler, who has had a string of box office disappointments.
Pacific Rim was only able to pull in $38.3 million for a claim to third place, despite the plethora of Internet chatter and online buzz. Disappointingly, strong reviews and fan reaction ( 72 percent of critics and 88 percent of moviegoers liked the film, according to Rottentomatoes.com) were not able to attract a bigger audience leading Guillermo del Toro’s story of monsters vs. robots to fall short of analysts’ projections of $40 million. The film seemed unable to expand past its fanboy audience.
After three weeks in theaters, Fox’s Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy comedy The Heat placed No. 4, ending the weekend with a North American gross of $112.4 million.
Coming in No. 5 was Gore Verbinski’s troubled The Lone Ranger, which fell 61 percent to $11.1 million in its second weekend, for a dismal domestic haul of $77.1 million. Lone Ranger has a number of major markets in which it is yet to open, but so far things are just not looking good for the Western. Overseas, the big-budget tentpole took in a meek $12.7 million from 33 territories, for an international total of $48 million and worldwide gross of $119.1 million.
Fruitvale Station, the Weinstein Company’s critically acclaimed biopic about the shooting of Oscar Grant by BART police in Oakland made headlines at the specialty box office in North America. In the midst of the George Zimmerman acquittal, the micro-budget film grossed $377,285 from seven theaters for a location average of $53,898, the third best of the year so far according to The Hollywood Reporter.
