By Dustin Rowles | Box Office Round-Ups | February 25, 2013 |
By Dustin Rowles | Box Office Round-Ups | February 25, 2013 |
Over the weekend, Hollywood once again used a little-trafficked Oscar weekend to dump a few movies into the marketplace that weren’t really expected to gain much traction. Keri Russel’s Dark Skies did very poorly, debuting at number six with an anemic $8.5 million. Meanwhile, Identity Theft reclaimed its spot at number one after a week’s absence. The Melissa McCarthy/Jason Bateman flick is clearly the hit of the dead season, as it approaches $100 million. A Good Day to Die Hard, meanwhile, is already tumbling, falling 60 percent to number five, adding only $10 million in its second weekend. in fact, it fell behind Nicholas Sparks’ Safe Haven, while Escape from Planet Earth ($11 million) fell only 30 percent, benefiting from being the only animated fare in multiplexes at the moment.
The other debut this was Snitch featuring The Rock, which opened at number two with a lackluster $13 million. It also featured Oscar winner Susan Sarandon, which represents the kind of irony I love: Oscar winners having their films dumped into theaters on Oscar weekend.
Here are 16 other examples of that.
Vantage Point (Forest Whitaker) — $22 million
Brooklyn’s Finest (Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke) — $13.5 million
Heartbreakers (Gene Hackman, Sigourney Weaver) — $11 million
Cursed (Jessie Eisenberg) — $9.6 million
Man of the House (Tommy Lee Jones) — $8.9 million
Twisted (Sam Jackson, Andy Garcia) — $8.9 million
View from the Top (Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Ruffalo) — $7.9 million
Drive Angry (Nic Cage) — $5.1 million
The Astronaut Farmer (Billy Bob Thornton, Virginia Madsen) — $4.4 million
Be Kind, Rewind (Michel Gondry) — $4 million