Guardians was busy over holiday

Michelangelo (from left), Donatello and Leonardo gear up for battle in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It remained in second place at last weekend’s box office and made about $15.6 million.
Michelangelo (from left), Donatello and Leonardo gear up for battle in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It remained in second place at last weekend’s box office and made about $15.6 million.

Guardians of the Galaxy, the hit movie about a group of misfit superheroes, stayed atop U.S. and Canadian theaters as Hollywood finished the worst summer for ticket sales since 2006.

Guardians, from Disney’s Marvel studio, collected about $23 million over the four-day U.S. Labor Day weekend, outdrawing two new releases, researcher Rentrak Corp. said Monday. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles remained in second place, generating about $15.6 million.

“Summer 2014 was in the unenviable position of following what was the biggest revenue-generating summer of all time in 2013,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst at Rentrak. “This made comparisons very tough.”

Guardians, released Aug. 1, is the biggest film in the United States this year and puts a positive cap on a season in which many movie fans stayed away from the multiplex. Sales have declined about 15 percent from a year earlier, according to Rentrak, which estimates the summer total will be about $4.10 billion, the least since $3.75 billion in 2006.

Two new films opened in wide release. As Above, So Below, from Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures, opened with sales of $10.2 million to rank fifth. The audience for the R-rated horror movie, in which explorers discover secrets in Paris’ catacombs according to IMDB.com, was about 52 percent female, and about 57 percent of the group was younger than age 25, according to a Rentrak survey.

The picture got unfavorable reviews from critics, heading into the weekend with a 23 percent positive rating on Rottentomatoes.com, which distills reviews into a single number. The post-weekend rating was 33 percent. BoxOffice.com had projected $11.5 million in sales over the four days.

“There are some interestingly contrived moments of claustrophobia and surreal lunacy, but this cliched and slightly hand-me-down script neither scares nor amuses very satisfyingly, Peter Bradshaw wrote in the Guardian.

The November Man, from Relativity Media LLC, produced $10.1 million for sixth place. The spy thriller, which stars Pierce Brosnan, attracted an audience in which 83 percent of the viewers were older than 25, a survey showed.

Brosnan’s character is an ex-CIA operative who is brought back into action and pitted against a former protege in a battle involving the Russian president-elect.

The film, which opened Aug. 27, was forecast to generate $8.8 million for Relativity Media over the four-day weekend. The movie registered a 36 percent positive rating with Rottentomatoes.com.

Scheduling played a role in the shrinking summer sales at theaters. Some studios shifted film releases to avoid conflict with the World Cup soccer tournament from mid-June to mid-July.

Others released megaclunkers like Edge of Tomorrow, from Warner Bros. The Tom Cruise film cost $178 million to make, according to Box Office Mojo, and brought in $100 million in domestic sales.

Delays also played a role. Disney’s Pixar division pushed back the release of The Good Dinosaur until November 2015 because the film wasn’t ready, while Universal postponed Fast & Furious 7 until next year after the death of actor Paul Walker in a car accident.

Worldwide, Transformers: Age of Extinction is still the top movie for the summer and for the year, with $1.07 billion in global revenue, according to Box Office Mojo. Guardians has about $548 million in worldwide sales and is unlikely to catch up.

While the international box office makes up a growing portion of film revenue, the U.S. remains the largest market. The sales that studios receive for movies in the home entertainment market — cable TV showings, DVDs and movie downloads, for example — closely follow the domestic box office, and are in some cases tied directly to ticket sales.

With Guardians, Marvel brought a scrappy, less-known group of comic-book heroes to cinemas, with an eye toward developing a new film series. The studio spent $170 million making the movie, according to Box Office Mojo. A sequel is planned for 2017, Disney said.

Chris Pratt, known for NBC’s Parks & Recreation sitcom, stars as Peter Quill, an American pilot who becomes the target of an unrelenting bounty hunt in space. He’s pursued after stealing a mysterious orb coveted by the super-villain Ronan, played by Lee Pace (AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire).

Pratt is joined by co-stars Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, and characters voiced by Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel.

The summer season runs from the start of May through Labor Day . Producing hits during this period is critical for studios, which generate about 40 percent of their annual box-office revenue when children are on school break.

Weekend sales for the top 10 films fell 5.2 percent, to $80.5 million, from a year earlier, Rentrak said. For the year to date, domestic ticket sales are down 5.1 percent, to $7.2 billion.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Rentrak, are:

  1. Guardians of the Galaxy, Disney, $22,906,851, 3,462 locations, $6,617 average, $281,204,119, four weeks.

  2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Paramount, $15,622,005, 3,543 locations, $4,409 average, $166,277,985, four weeks.

  3. If I Stay, Warner Bros., $11,768,220, 3,003 locations, $3,919 average, $32,330,502, two weeks.

  4. Let’s Be Cops, 20th Century Fox, $10,371,201, 3,010 locations, $3,446 average, $59,492,722, three weeks.

  5. As Above, So Below, Universal, $10,284,110, 2,640 locations, $3,895 average, $10,284,110, one week.

  6. The November Man, Relativity Media, $10,105,877, 2,776 locations, $3,640 average, $11,797,351, one week (opened Aug. 27).

  7. When the Game Stands Tall, Columbia, $8,158,363, 2,673 locations, $3,052 average, $18,828,455, two weeks.

  8. The Giver, The Weinstein Co., $6,957,664, 2,805 locations, $2,480 average, $33,230,314, three weeks.

  9. The Hundred-Foot Journey, Disney, $6,467,392, 1,918 locations, $3,372 average, $41,262,637, four weeks.

  10. The Expendables 3, Lionsgate, $4,538,535, 2,564 locations, $1,770 average, $34,177,584, three weeks.

  11. Lucy, Universal, $3,532,210, 1,293 locations, $2,732 average, $118,611,525, six weeks.

  12. Cantinflas, Lionsgate, $3,358,013, 382 locations, $8,791 average, $3,358,013, one week.

  13. Into the Storm, Warner Bros., $3,251,312, 1,603 locations, $2,028 average, $42,699,712, four weeks.

  14. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, The Weinstein Co., $2,860,470, 2,894 locations, $988 average, $11,452,031, two weeks.

  15. Ghostbusters, Columbia, $2,305,924, 784 locations, $2,941 average, $223,434,059, 1,578 weeks.

  16. Boyhood, IFC Films, $1,971,308, 632 locations, $3,119 average, $18,971,829, eight weeks.

  17. How to Train Your Dragon 2, 20th Century Fox, $1,684,605, 1,096 locations, $1,537 average, $174,014,832, 12 weeks.

  18. Begin Again, The Weinstein Co., $1,163,419, 335 locations, $3,473 average, $15,704,534, 10 weeks.

  19. Magic in the Moonlight, Sony Pictures Classics, $1,139,146, 438 locations, $2,601 average, $8,328,691, six weeks.

  20. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, 20th Century Fox, $1,111,347, 468 locations, $2,375 average, $205,531,338, eight weeks.

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