Box Office: 'Ender's Game' Takes the Top Spot With $28 Million
Credit: Summit Entertainment / Lionsgate
It's game, set and match for Ender's Game at the weekend box office.
The sci-fi epic from Oscar-winning director Gavin Hood, based on the classic novel by Orson Scott Card, opened to $28 million to take the No. 1 spot. While this is a solid enough number, the film will need to have considerable legs to make back its substantial $110 million production budget. While this normally wouldn't seem like such a tall order for a film as well-promoted as Ender's Game, the movie will be competing next weekend with the hotly-anticipated Thor: The Dark World, which is likely to draw away huge segments of Ender's audience.
Ender's Game, a futuristic story that centers on a young boy tasked with foiling an alien invasion, is off to a solid start overseas with $9.1 million across 15 markets. This is all the more impressive when considering the book was never all that popular internationally.
Last week's No. 1, Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, dropped less than 38 percent in its second weekend, taking in an impressive $20.5 million to bring its domestic total to $62.1 million. It came in No. 2, handily beating out two of the weekend's new arrivals.
Last Vegas, starring Oscar winners Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline, finished the weekend at No. 3 with $16.5 million. This was much stronger than anticipated for the comedy, which centers on four friends in their 60s going on one last trip to Las Vegas. The film cost just $28 million to make, so it should be able to turn a profit before it's all said and done, particularly since the film's older target audience don't often see films in their opening weekend, meaning that the movie still has a considerable amount of money left to make.
Meanwhile, the weekend's other new arrival, the 3D animated film Free Birds, starring Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, and Amy Poehler,
grossed $16.2 million for fourth place. A rare Thanksgiving-themed movie, Free Birds cost roughly $55 million to produce, and is the first animated 3D feature from Relativity Media.
Lastly, Steve McQueen's Oscar frontunner 12 Years a Slave made considerable gains in its third weekend, which saw the film expand to a total of 410 theaters. The American slavery epic finished the weekend at No. 7, grossing $4.6 million to bring its North American total to $8.8 million. The film, however, has yet to have its wide release yet, so these numbers are already promising for the film's future viewership.
The full Top 10:
1. Ender’s Game ($27.6 million)
2. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa ($20.75 million)
3. Last Vegas ($16.3 million)
4. Free Birds ($16 million)
5. Gravity (Weekend $13.1 million)
6. Captain Phillips ($8.5 million)
7. 12 Years A Slave ($4.8 million)
8. Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2 ($4.1 million)
9. The Counselor ($3.39 million)
10. Carrie ($3.38 million)
Via: Deadline / The Hollywood Reporter