Police drama wins 3-way race

Jennifer Lawrence stars in the thriller House at the End of the Street. The film came in second at $12.2 million at last weekend’s box office.
Jennifer Lawrence stars in the thriller House at the End of the Street. The film came in second at $12.2 million at last weekend’s box office.

— The police story End of Watch won a close race at the weekend box office.

The Los Angeles tale starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena debuted with $13.1 million to finish as the weekend’s No. 1 movie, according to final studio figures reported Monday.

End of Watch had been in a photo finish for first place with two other new movies, Jennifer Lawrence’s horror tale House at the End of the Street and Clint Eastwood’s baseball drama Trouble With the Curve.

The big weekend loser, however, was Dredd 3D, the science-fiction action film based on a British comic strip that was only able to muster up $6.2 million in sales.

Business overall was slow, and receipts dropped 25 percent last weekend when stacked up with the same three-day period last year.

End of Watch received the most positive critical reviews of any of the weekend’s new wide releases, and audiences liked it best as well. Those who saw the film assigned it an average grade of A-minus, according to market research firm CinemaScore. (Eastwood’s Curve received a B-plus grade, while Dredd 3D and House at the End of the Street each earned a B.)

Watch is about two police officers who form a close bond as they work the streets of South-Central Los Angeles together. The movie is the latest of Gyllenhaal’s low- tomid-budget films to perform modestly at the domestic box office. Last year, the 31-year-old’s sci-fi thriller Source Code grossed a decent $54.7 million at the U.S. box office, but his romantic drama Love and Other Drugs took in $32.4 million in 2010.

House at the End of the Street is the first film Jennifer Lawrence has appeared in since the release of the blockbuster The Hunger Games in March. The actress, who rose to fame after her Oscar-nominated turn in 2010’s Winter’s Bone, recently began generating awards buzz again after her forthcoming dramedy Silver Linings Playbook debuted to rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival this month.

The movie, produced by FilmNation Entertainment and A Bigger Boat for $10 million, was acquired by Relativity Media last year for about $2.5 million. The film is the studio’s first release since April, when its Edgar Allan Poe thriller The Raven tanked in theaters.

Trouble With the Curve is the first movie that 82-yearold Eastwood has acted in — but not directed — in nearly two decades. In his new movie, the actor plays a baseball scout who must work on his troubled relationship with his daughter (Amy Adams) when he starts losing his vision.

Dredd 3D generated positive fan hype at Comic Con in July, but that buzz didn’t carry over to the film’s opening weekend. The few who did turn up to see the movie about a law enforcer tasked with bringing order to a futuristic post-apocalyptic world were mostly older males.

The movie, adapted from the same Judge Dredd comic that spawned the 1995 Sylvester Stallone flop, was produced by IM Global for roughly $40 million. While domestic distributor Lionsgate put only a small amount toward that production cost, the studio still spent around $25 million to advertise the film.

MovieStyle, Pages 34 on 09/28/2012

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