The Weekend Report

There may have been a Need for Speed in the marketplace but the cross-country carnage came up short of top gear and finished with the bronze and an estimated $17.7 million. The session’s top dog was in fact the animated canine Mr. Peabody & Sherman which posted $21.4 million.

The frame’s only other national deb was the urban comedy The Single Mom’s Club which performed to expectations with an $8.4 million box office. Among the limited openings the big screen version of TV cult favorite Veronica Mars was off to a good start with a $2 million tally from 291 locations while the psychological thriller Enemy grossed a fair $233,000 from 53 playdates. Neither the rom-com Better Living Through Chemistry nor the caper yarn The Art of the Steal evinced much of a commercial pulse and the Bollywood newcomer Bewakoofiyaan was off to a disappointing start.

Dipping a toe in the multiplex, the darkly comic Bad Words had a very encouraging start of $122,000 on six screens and the Brit marital comedy Le Weekend had an OK $28,900 from two engagements. Cesar winner Les Garcons et Guillaume bowed at two Quebec venues to a solid $37,600.

Overall weekend revenues inched toward $115 million for a 23% dip from seven days earlier and saw a modest 5% bump from 2013. A year ago the second weekend of Oz: the Great and Powerful led with $41.3 million with newcomers The Call and Burt Wonderstone in the distance with respective bows of $17.1 million and $10.2 million.

Tracking had pegged the opening of Need for Speed at roughly $25 million and predicted the film would be the top weekend attraction. And while the car caper led on Friday, Saturday business expanded by just 1%. The news overseas was considerably rosier with early estimates of $45 million from 27 territories including roughly $21 million from China where it was breaking good.

Studio exit polls identified the domestic audience as 70% male with couples repping 66% of viewers. The crowd was 55% aged 25-years and older.

The latest from Tyler Perry, The Single Moms Club, continued the filmmaker’s box office consistency without demonstrating any signs of a developing crossover audience. Its opening weekend audience was 79% female with 80% of viewers aged 25-years and upward.

The session also saw a potent expansion for The Grand Budapest Hotel that posted $3.6 million as it added 62 venues to its initial four theater break.

The other notable weekend start belong to Veronica Mars that translated its fan based into an effective Kickstarter campaign and mounted a simultaneous theatrical/pay-per-view scheme. While that limited its exposure on the big screen, the fact that a major was behind the venture could well see more studio experiments of this nature much to the chagrin of the exhibition chains.

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