Cavemen clubbed competition

Friday, March 29, 2013

LOS ANGELES - The animated caveman tale The Croods may have hunted down the competition last weekend, but it still couldn’t light a fire under the box office.

The 3-D family film took No. 1, grossing more than $43 million, according to an estimate from distributor 20th Century Fox. Despite a respectable start, the DreamWorks Animation picture and the weekend’s other new releases were unable to lift overall ticket sales.

The 2013 slump continued, as receipts are down 13 percent compared with last year, and attendance is off 14 percent, according to Hollywood.com. The combined gross of all of last weekend’s releases - $139.5 million - doesn’t even add up to the $152.5 million opening gross of The Hunger Games, which launched during the same threeday period a year ago.

Though it is far from being a blockbuster of Hunger Games proportions, Olympus Has Fallen did beat industry expectations over the weekend. The White House-set action thriller debuted with a healthy $30.4 million - about $10 million more than anyone in Hollywood had predicted.

Meanwhile, the Tina Fey-Paul Rudd comedy Admission started off with an underwhelming $6.2 million. And Spring Breakers, the raunchy art-house party film that expanded to 1,100 theaters last weekend, collected $4.9 million.

Those who saw The Croods liked it a lot, assigning it an average grade ofA, according to market research firm CinemaScore. That’s good news for the $135 million film, as it will need strong word of mouth if it is to become a bona fide hit.

Despite its mediocre reviews, Olympus Has Fallen resonated with moviegoers, as the opening-weekend crowd gave it an A-minus grade. The R-rated movie overperformed at the box office largelybecause older males turned out in force: About 73 percent of the audience was older than 25.

But Olympus Has Fallen, which stars Gerard Butler as a disgraced Secret Service agent trying to save the White House from a terrorist takeover, is also one of the costliest movies FilmDistrict has released. Avi Lerner’s Millennium Films spent about $70 million to make the film, which was acquired by Film-District at no cost. (FilmDistrict is helping to pay the marketing of the movie, however.)

The movie did particularly well in regions near military bases such as Oklahoma City and Honolulu, said Jim Orr, FilmDistrict’s president of distribution. The picture was screened for members of the military in recent weeks.

Critics and audiences were unenthused about Admission, which stars Fey as a college admissions counselor on a mission to help a high-schooler get accepted to Princeton. The movie was the worst reviewed of any of the weekend’s new releases and also notched the lowest CinemaScore - a B-minus. The few who turned out to see it were mostly older females - 68 percent of the audience consisted of women, and 63 percent was over the age of 35.

The film is the first major disappointment for the former 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live star, who helped to lead 2008’s Baby Mama and 2010’s Date Night to box-office success. Admission, a $13 million Focus Features release, is not as broad a comedy as her previous efforts.

MovieStyle, Pages 32 on 03/29/2013