If Godzilla‘s plummet to second disappointed the executives at Warner Bros., I doubt that they will want to work with Adam Sandler again. Blended, his latest romantic comedy with Drew Barrymore, managed to miss its modest box-office expectations and landed in third with $14.2 million (and $17.9 million including Monday). This was an embarrassing opening for Sandler, who has not seen one of his broad PG-13 titles open that low since Eight Crazy Nights in November 2002.
Blended sold fewer than half of the tickets The Wedding Singer did in its first three days back in February 1998, and opened around the same level as his recent R-rated miss That’s My Boy ($13.4 million). Sandler is not the moviegoing draw he used to be, and with awful reviews (including our 1-star pan) and a lot of big competition this weekend, the comedy definitely had a hard time breaking out.
The pairing of Sandler and Barrymore opened only only slightly ahead of the third-weekend take of Efron and Rogen. Neighbors slid to fourth, pulling in $13.9 million (and $17.3 million over four days). The film has already made back its $18 million budget tenfold worldwide, and has taken in $113.7 million so far in North America. While comedy hits in the summer tend to open moderately but have longevity due to good legs from strong word-of-mouth, Neighbors opened big but is losing its audience more quickly than expected. Expect it to close with around $145 million, just short of Knocked Up‘s $148.8 million total.
Rounding out the top five was The Amazing Spider-Man 2, with $7.8 million (and an estimated $10 million over four days). The film has a $184.9 million total, which means it has sold roughly the same number of tickets in 24 days that the first Spider-Man film sold in its opening weekend in 2002. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 still has a big international presence, with more than 72 per cent of its gross coming from foreign markets, as the film currently has a $673.9 million cume worldwide. However, despite that strong take, it should only crawl past the $200 million mark stateside.
On the indie film front, Jon Favreau’s crowd-pleasing foodie comedy Chef jumped into ninth place, with $2.3 million from 498 theatres (for a decent $4,538 per theater average over three days). Fox Searchlight’s period drama Belle expanded to 280 more theatres and leaped 81 per cent to make $1.7 million over three days. The cumes are $3.5 and $3.9 million for those films, respectively. Debuting far from the top 20 is the Clive Owen-Juliette Binoche romance Words and Pictures, which made a moderate $91,400 from 10 theatres.
Here are the box office estimates for the Top 10 films at the North American box office, the weekend of May 23 through May 25, 2014:
1. X-Men: Days of Future Past – $90.7 million (NEW)
2. Godzilla – $31.4 million ($148.8 million total)
3. Blended – $14.2 million (NEW)
4. Neighbors – $13.9 million ($113.6 million total)
5. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – $7.8 million (184.9 million total)
6. Million Dollar Arm – $7.1 million ($20.6 million total)
7. The Other Woman – $3.7 million ($77.8 million total)
8. Rio 2 – $2.5 million ($121.6 million total)
9. Chef – $2.3 million ($3.5 million total)
10. Heaven is for Real – $2 million ($85.8 million total)
NOTE: These numbers are weekend estimates based on Friday and Saturday’s estimated takes. Actual numbers for the 3-day weekend are reported on Monday afternoon, while the 4-day actual numbers for the long weekend will come in on Tuesday afternoon.
