By Dustin Rowles | Box Office Round-Ups | October 14, 2012 |
By Dustin Rowles | Box Office Round-Ups | October 14, 2012 |
It was an exciting weekend at the box office, as the well received Sinister led the Friday box office, but was bounced to number three for the weekend after a Saturday surge from Ben Affleck’s Argo, a movie that received a rare A+ Cinemascore (and 93 percent of whose audience was over 25, and therefore a harder audience to please). Argo ($20 million) ended the weekend as the number two film right behind Taken 2 ($22 million), and expect Argo to have long legs, hanging around the rest of the year and perhaps even getting a re-release after it racks up a ton of Oscar nominations (and unlike another early Oscar contender, The Master, Argo was actually entertaining).
Meanwhile, Sinister wildly overperformed, racking up $18 million on a $3 million budget. I’m stoked for co-writer C. Robert Cargill (Massawyrm at Ain’t It Cool News) because, despite his affiliation with a site that uses Comic Sans, the little I know of him suggests he’s one of the nicest, most genuine guys in the movie blog world, and I like it when good people succeed. Congratulations, Mr. Cargill.
I’m also happy to see that Sinister beat out Here Comes the Boom, which came in at number five with a soft $12 million opening weekend. That’s two underperforming Kevin James films in a row now (Zookeeper), although both James and Adam Sandler provided voice work on Hotel Transylvania, the number four film on the weekend, crossing the $100 million mark.
Speaking of Sandler, he is expectedly among the 10 highest grossing “Saturday Night Live” alums of all time. Here’s that list.
1. Eddie Murphy — $3.8 billion lifetime gross
2. Ben Stiller — $2.61 billion lifetime gross
3. Robert Downey, Jr. — $2.59 billion lifetime gross
4. Dan Aykroyd — $2.42 billion lifetime gross
5. Mike Myers — $2.21 billion lifetime gross
6. Adam Sandler — $2.18 billion lifetime gross
7. Will Ferrell — $1.51 billion lifetime gross
8. Bill Murray — $1.47 billion lifetime gross
9. Chris Rock — $1.44 billion lifetime gross
10. Chevy Case — $997 million lifetime gross
Elsewhere at the box office, Pitch Perfect put up another $9 million ($36 million cumulative), Looper crossed the $50 million mark, and sadly, Martin McDonaugh’s Seven Psychopaths came in at only number nine with $4.2 million. I saw a double feature of Seven Psychopaths and Argo on Friday night, one of the best movie nights I’ve had in a very long time.