Late one night, as the official box office tally-keeper was keeping tally of the latest movies, he heard strange noises … a sporadic clapping … coming from a huge wardrobe in the corner of his office.
“Huh,” he said. “Don’t remember that being there before.” And so he lit a match (the official tally keeper likes to tabulate in the dark) and slowly edged toward the wardrobe.
CLAP-CLAP!
“There it is again,” the tally keeper thought to himself. The match burned down to the man’s fingers, causing him to squeal sharply and drop the match on the floor. But he was close to the wardrobe now. He took one, two, three more steps and stretched out his—
CLAP-CLAP!
—fingers, grasping the wardrobe handle as eerie, cacophonic music played from his iPod (the official tally keeper likes his tunes). The wardrobe door opened with a click and a slow, frightening squeak, and—
Out jumped The Conjuring, this weekend’s No. 1 movie.
The freaky-creepy, Christian-tinged, R-rated horror flick shot to the top of the box office this week, earning an estimated $41.5 million. Not only was that double the film’s projected budget, but it was a record start for an original, non-sequel fright flick (besting last month’s The Purge).
The Conjuring was tops during a crowded weekend at the multiplex—one of four movies to hit wide release this week. Alas, the rest were not quite so … lively.
Turbo, the new animated snail lark from DreamWorks, had a hard time getting up to speed and finished third in the box office derby, behind last week’s champ (and fellow animated flick) Despicable Me 2. Despicable is proving to be anything but for its shepherds at Universal Pictures. Not only did its third-weekend $25.1 million shoot past Turbo’s $21.5 million, it also is now the third-most lucrative movie of the year—its $276.2 million less than $9 million shy of Man of Steel for the No. 2 slot. If Despicable stays strong, it could top Supes next week.
Another holdover, Grown Ups 2, nailed down the fourth position with a $20 million weekend. It was enough to hold off the menace of Red 2, which opened with a disappointing $18.5 million.
Of course, Red 2′s take wasn’t nearly as disappointing as the DOA entry of R.I.P.D. The PG-13 supernatural buddy-cop romp earned just $12.8 million for a seventh-place finish, and seemed doomed from the get-go by bad reviews, bad word-of-mouth and just plain badness. Which goes to show you that, The Conjuring aside, populating a movie with a bunch of dead monsters isn’t enough to make a hit movie.
Final figures update: 1. The Conjuring, $41.9 million; 2. Despicable Me 2, $24.9 million; 3. Turbo, $21.3 million; 4. Grown Ups 2, $19.9 million; 5. Red 2, $18 million.
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