This weekend was all about The Purge, which surprised everyone by earning an estimated $36.3 million. What's really impressive about its box office performance is that this movie didn't have a huge theater count. Traditionally, a wide release from a major studio will open in 3,000+ theaters, but Universal rolled out The Purge in only 2,536. This movie cost $3 million to produce, and even if you factor in the marketing costs, it's a huge win for Blumhouse Productions and Universal.
Fast & Furious 6 and Now You See Me continue to perform well at the box office, taking second and third place with $19.76 million and $19.5 million. With The Internship, Fox hoped to recreate the success that Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn had with Wedding Crashers. Unfortunately, the movie only earned $18.1 million and it's going to take a while to make back its $58 million production budget.
Next week sees the release of This Is The End on Wednesday, but the big movie of the week will be Man of Steel. Warner Bros. will release the movie on 4,200+ screens and it should easily be one of the biggest releases of the year. Here are the top ten results for this weekend:
1. The Purge $36,379,000
2. Fast & Furious 6 $19,760,000
3. Now You See Me $19,500,000
4. The Internship $18,100,000
5. Epic $12,100,000
6. Star Trek Into Darkness $11,700,000
7. After Earth $11,200,000
8. The Hangover Part III $7,380,000
9. Iron Man 3 $5,787,000
10. The Great Gatsby $4,230,000