Box Office Results: Thor Hammers Out a Second Weekend at #1

The ComingSoon.net Box Office Report has been updated with studio estimates for the weekend. Click here for the full box office estimates of the top 12 films and then check back on Monday for the final figures based on actual box office.

It was quite a weekend for Malcolm D. Lee’s comedy sequel The Best Man Holiday (Universal), which reunited the entire cast of the original 1999 hit to have an impressive weekend showing of an estimated $30.5 million in just 2,024 theaters, averaging over $15,000 per venue. That was roughly 87% of the total gross of the original movie, proving that it had found most of its audience on DVD and cable. That movie’s success was already quite impressive for its time since Lee hired the likes of Morris Chestnut, Taye Diggs, Regina Hall, Terrence Howard, Sanaa Lathan, Nia Long and Harold Perrineau fairly early in their careers… and then convinced them all to return 14 years later for the sequel.

Still, it failed to dethrone last week’s #1 movie, Thor: The Dark World, starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins and Christopher Eccleston, as it dropped 55% to remain on top with $38.4 million, its domestic total of $147 million already at 81% of the total gross of the original Thor after just ten days. Internationally, the movie added another $52.5 million so its international gross of $333 million is still surpassing domestic by 2:1. With a worldwide gross currently at $480 million, it’s already surpassed the amount made globally by its predecessor.

Brazilians are already pretty lucky since they get to live in the beautiful country of Brazil, but they got even luckier by being the first country to get Lionsgate’s anticipated sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, a week earlier than the rest of the world. The movie grossed an estimated $6.5 million over the holiday weekend, more than double the $3.2 million Brazilian opening of the original. If you didn’t know, “Catching Fire” opens in North America and 65 other international territories this coming Friday.

CBS Films’ oldies comedy Last Vegas, bringing together Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro and Kevin Kline, swapped spots once again with the animated Free Birds (Relativity Media), as it went back up to third place with $8.9 million–sporting the smallest drop in the Top 10, down just 20%–and a total of $46.9 million. Free Birds in turn dropped to fourth place with $8.3 million with $42.2 million grossed after three weeks in theaters.

Johnny Knoxville’s Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (Paramount) is still proving to be a huge hit, and though it dropped down three places to #5, its $7.7 million weekend gross brought its total to $90.2 million, which is second only behind the third installment (which had the benefits of higher 3D ticket prices). Considering the low production cost, a reported $15 million, you can bet your bottom dollar that Paramount is going to let Knoxville do whatever he wants under his “Jackass” imprint as long as it continues to be hugely profitable.

Remaining in sixth place, Alfonso Cuarón’s space thriller Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, added another $6.3 million, bringing its total gross to $240.6 million, as it surpassed Fast & Furious 6 to become the fifth-highest grossing movie of the year domestically. Globally, the movie has brought in $500 million, which is quite a coup for Cuarón, Warner Bros. and producer David Heyman, who took their time making the movie until they could do it right, and it paid off big time!

Summit’s movie based on Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi epic Ender’s Game (Summit) held up better in its third weekend than its second, still dropping to seventh place with $6.2 million and a total gross of $53.8 million.

Steve McQueen’s acclaimed drama and the “Oscar frontrunner” 12 Years a Slave (Fox Searchlight), starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch and Brad Pitt, may be seeing some signs of malaise already. It dropped 33% this weekend, despite adding 267 more theaters, and fell to eighth place with $4.7 million with a total gross of just under $25 million.

Ninth place went to Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks’ Somali pirate thriller Captain Phillips (Sony), which is slowly making its way to $100 million in domestic box office. This week it brought in $4.5 million in 2,626 locations for a running total of $97.6 million. It also added another $8.4 million internationally this weekend to bring its worldwide total to $164 million.

Richard (Love Actually) Curtis’ latest romantic drama About Time, starring Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy, rounded out the Top 10 with $3.5 million, down 27% from its first weekend in wide release, bringing its domestic total to $11.6 million and worldwide gross to $53 million.

Although it’s dropped out of the Top 10, Sony Pictures Animation’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 has crossed the $200 million mark globally, while the Russian IMAX film Stalingrad has grossed $65.7 million overseas, $51.5 million of that coming from (where else?) Russia. It’s the country’s third-highest grossing movie after James Cameron’s Avatar and the fourth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie.

Back in the U.S.S.A.*, the Top 10 grossed roughly $119 million which was way down from last year when the finale, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 opened with $141 million on its own and the Top 10 grossed $100 million more than that. Maybe a fairer comparison will come next weekend when The Hunger Games: Catching Fire opens in North America.

Alexander Payne’s new film Nebraska (Paramount Vantage), starring Bruce Dern and Will Forte, opened in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles after a successful festival run, and it grossed $140 thousand or $35 thousand per site.

Click here for the full box office estimates of the top 12 films.

* If you’re not a Beatles fan and/or don’t get the reference, please don’t out yourself in the comments…