You’d think giants would’ve held up a bit better against a fraudulent wizard. But no. Maybe the balloon freaked ’em out.
In a box office showdown pitting Oz the Great and Powerful against Jack the Giant Slayer, it was Oz proving his powerful greatness. Across North America, moviegoers skipped down their respective yellow brick roads (or drove down their yellow-lined ones), singing, “We’re off to see the wizard” to the tune of $80.3 million (estimated, of course). It was the biggest opening of 2013 so far and showed Hollywood that if you’re going to make a fantasyworld CGI spectacle, you might as well make a PG flick that the whole family can see. (Or at least family members who wouldn’t be scared by the flying monkeys.)
Sure, Oz didn’t tally Avengers’ like numbers. But to put Oz’s weekend in perspective, let me toss out one more important number: The total box office gross for all 43 movies in the multiplex (not counting discount theaters) was around $140 million, according to Box Office Mojo. That means that Oz out-earned the other 42 movies combined—by about $20 million. Oz was simply, um, Ozzum.
If Oz could be 2013’s first real blockbuster, Jack is well on pace to become its first crushing flop. The PG-13 movie dropped nearly two-thirds of its audience to earn just $10 million. It’s now on pace to earn less than last year’s much-maligned bomb, John Carter. But hey, the dark cloud holding up the land of the giants still boasts a small silver lining: Jack held off its rivals to hold onto second place.
Identity Thief continues to perform well, collecting $6.3 million to finish third. It’s finished in the Top 5 for the last six weeks now. At this rate, we could still be talking about this R-rated comedy when Oz the Great and Powerful II is released.
Dead Man Down, the weekend’s other wide release, was pretty much a dead movie down—banking a relatively tiny $5.4 million. So far, it’s been a pretty bad year for gritty R-rated action flicks: Sly Stallone’s Bullet to the Head, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Last Stand and Jason Statham’s Parker all opened to less than $10 million Only A Good Day to Die Hard has done better. Where’s Liam Neeson when you need him?
Speaking of actioners, the PG-13 Snitch rounds out this week’s Top 5 with $5.1 million.
Final figures update: 1. Oz the Great and Powerful, $79.1 million; 2. Jack the Giant Slayer, $9.8 million; 3. Identity Thief, $6.3 million; 4. Dead Man Down, $5.3 million; 5. Snitch, $5.1 million.
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