Box Office Results: Captain America Stays Atop Despite Tight Race with Rio 2

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.

Three new movies opened on Thursday night, including an animated sequel that honestly looked like it would give Marvel Studios’ Captain America: The Winter Soldier a run for the #1 spot at the box office, but Marvel’s April record-setting sequel held off Rio 2 (20th Century Fox) for a second weekend at the top.

Friday estimates showed it to be a much tighter race with Rio 2 ahead of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, $12 million to $11.9 million, a mere $100,000 difference, but the real story came on Saturday when “Cap” had a much larger bump than the animated sequel with Sunday estimates having Captain America: The Winter Soldier win the weekend with $41.4 million to Rio 2‘s $39 million. That brings the superhero flick’s domestic total to $159 million, less than $20 million away from what the original movie grossed domestically.

For comparison, the original Rio opened in North America on a similar April weekend in 2011 taking in $39.2 million before going on to gross $143 million domestic and $484 million worldwide. One would expect Rio 2 to do even better internationally going by other recent studio releases, and sure enough, the animated sequel added another $62.3 million from 62 international territories this weekend and has grossed $125.2 million overseas, putting it well on its way to beating the first movie as far as global box office.

As of Friday, Captain America: The Winter Soldier has opened in all international markets except for Japan, adding another $60.6 million overseas this weekend to bring its international total to $318 million and global total to $476.7 million. (The original Captain America movie topped out at $371 million globally.) As far as IMAX theaters, “The Winter Soldier” brought in an additional $7.3 million worldwide with $3.6 million of that coming from North American IMAX theaters. The sequel has grossed $31 million of its worldwide gross from IMAX screenings.

Back in North America, two other new movies vied for audiences, neither of them making much of an impact, with the horror movie Oculus (Relativity Media), starring Karen Gillan, Katee Sackhoff and Brenton Thwarts, coming out ahead of Kevin Costner’s latest, Draft Day (Summit Entertainment).

A festival favorite since it debuted as part of “Midnight Madness” at the Toronto International Film Festival, filmmaker Mike Flanagan’s Oculus scored a modest $12 million in 2,648 theaters, in the neighborhood of $4,500 per location, to take third place. Co-starring Jennifer Garner, Dennis Leary, Ellen Burstyn, Frank Langella and directed by Ivan Reitman, Draft Day–Kevin Costner’s third movie of 2014–opened relatively weak with just $9.8 million in 2,781 theaters.

As far as the other returning movies, Summit’s adaptation of Veronica Roth’s Divergent pulled slightly ahead of Darren Aronofsky’s biblical epic Noah (Paramount) (according to estimates) with $7.5 million, bringing its four-week total to $125 million. Divergent has grossed another $50.3 million overseas bringing its global total to $175.1 million as Summit begins production on the movie’s three sequels. Noah settled into sixth place (down from #2 last weekend) with $7.4 million or 56% off from last weekend with a total domestic gross of just under $85 million to date.

In its fourth weekend in theaters, the independently-produced Christian film God’s Not Dead (Freestyle Releasing) had its biggest drop since opening, down three places to seventh and off 42% from last weekend with $4.5 million. Even so, its near $41 million gross is nothing to complain about since it reportedly only cost $2 million to make.

Wes Anderson’s latest The Grand Budapest Hotel (Fox Searchlight) followed in eighth place with $4 million and a total gross of $39.5 million to date.

The Top 10 was rounded out by the two other family movies still in theaters, Muppets Most Wanted (Walt Disney Pictures) and DreamWorks Animation’s Mr. Peabody & Sherman (20th Century Fox), both which took massive plunges with Rio 2 taking over the family business. Both ended up in the $2 million range for the weekend, but “Mr. Peabody” ($105.2 million) has domestically grossed more than double the latest Muppets ($55.8 million) movie.

Also expanding nationwide into 954 theaters was the Indonesian action flick The Raid 2 (Sony Pictures Classics), directed by Gareth Evans, but it only averaged just over a thousand per venue for a weekend total of $1 million.

Lots of limited releases this weekend, some opening in more theaters than others, not that it helped them much.

Nick (Shaun of the Dead) Frost’s salsa dancing rom-com Cuban Fury, co-starring Rashida Jones and Chris O’Dowd, was released into 79 theaters, but only grossed $55.5 thousand or $702 per site. David Gordon Green’s crime-thriller Joe (Roadside Attractions), starring Nicolas Cage, fared better with $100 thousand grossed in 48 theaters or $2,000 per venue.

Two other movies platformed into just four theaters in New York and Los Angeles with Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, coming out ahead of the WWII drama The Railway Man, starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, $97 thousand to $64 thousand. The Jarmusch film averaged $24 thousand per location compared to the $16.1 thousand average of The Railway Man. (Notably, both movies grossed more than Cuban Fury, despite playing in 5% the amount of theaters.)

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