Box Office Fireworks

The minions outlawed The Lone Ranger over the grandly profitable Fourth of July week/end extravaganza.  The story isn't so much that it was surprising that Despicable Me 2, the sequel to 3-D animated 2010 hit, led the box office with such robust numbers, it's that Disney's overly expensive $215+ Ranger utterly failed.  Badgered by bad buzz that stems from while the film was still in production, deadly reviews, Armie Hammer's lack of movie star charisma and Johnny Depp ennui, the Gore Verbinski directed western based on the radio and television classic that nobody under forty has the faintest clue of, has taken the summer movie season's preeminent punchline prize from past bombs After Earth and White House Down.  That sounds harsh, but there's a valuable comeuppance that needs to be bridged from time to time when studios shell out hundreds of millions of dollars on wannabe franchises that nobody wanted to begin with.

1. Despicable Me 2- $82.5 / $142.0 total (new)
2. The Lone Ranger- $29.4 / $48.9 total (new)
3. The Heat- $25.0 / $86.3 total
4. Monsters University- $19.5 / 216.7 total
5. World War Z- $18.2 / $158.7 total
6. White House Down- $13.5 / $50.4 total
7. Man of Steel- $11.4 / $271.2 total
8. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain- $10.1 / $174 total (new)
9. This Is the End- $5.8 / $85.5 total
10. Now You See Me- $2.7 / $110.4 total
11. Star Trek Into Darkness- $1.3 / $223.0 total
12. Fast & Furious 6- $1.0 / $235.4 total

LIMITED RELEASES

Fox Searchlight's Sundance success story led the limited engagements this holiday weekend with The Way, Way Back netting a $30,000 per screen average in its first weekend of play.  The dramedy stars Steve Carell (whose had a pretty stellar week), Toni Collette, Sam Rockwell and newcomer Liam James and was written and directed by Jim Rash and Nat Faxon, Oscar-winning screenwriters of The Descendants.  In other news, 20 Feet From Stardom, a documentary centered on back-up singers, expanded nicely in its second week and will be one of the highest grossing docs of the year, surely, and a potential Oscar candidate thanks to its glowing reviews, while Before Midnight officially became the top-grossing film in the series, topping the $5.8 million that Before Sunset earned in 2004.

The Way, Way Back- $0.5 (new)
Before Midnight- $0.5 / $6.6 total
20 Feet From Stardom- $0.5 / $1.1 total
Much Ado About Nothing- $0.4 / $2.9 total
The Bling Ring- $0.3 / $5.0 total
Mud- $0.1 / $20.7 total
I'm So Excited- $0.1 / $0.3 total
Frances Ha- $0.1 / $3.6 total
The Kings of Summer- $0.09 / $1.0 total
Stories We Tell- $0.04 / $1.4 total