Friday Box Office: ‘Resident Evil,’ ‘Finding Nemo’ Take Top Spots
Although the Friday box office appeared to be in a slightly better place than it was last week, the batch of new release’s aren’t living up to their potential, Box Office Mojo is reporting. According to their figures, the box office is up 60 percent from last Friday, though receipts for both Resident Evil and Finding Nemo were a little below studio estimates. Altogether, the industry made around $21.5 million from yesterday’s Top 10 films.
Resident Evil: Retribution, the latest installment in the popular action-packed franchise, generated an estimated $8.4 million. Although this figure isn’t too bad for a poorly-reviewed sequel, it’s reportedly the lowest box office take for the franchise thus far. In fact, it’s the lowest opening-day total for the series since the original entry in 2002. Unless something drastic happens over the weekend, it would appear that interest in the movies is starting to fizzle.
At present, Resident Evil: Retribution has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 33 percent, which means that, in the eyes of critics, the film is fairly rotten. Moviegoers, on the other hand, don’t seem to mind the empty-headedness of the flick; the audience score at the aforementioned website is currently hovering at around 80 percent.
This week’s other major release, the 3D version of Pixar’s Finding Nemo, brought home an estimated $5 million, which is below Disney’s other re-releases. The company’s 3D release of The Lion King, for example, netted the company a cool $8.9 million last year. Beauty and the Beast 3D, meanwhile, snagged roughly $5.9 million on its first day out of the gate.
Although these major releases are currently struggling at the box office, the buzz surrounding director Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master helped the film earn around $242,000 from a mere five locations. A little rough math reveals that the picture earned around $48,000 per screening. The film is currently scheduled for a wide North American release on September 21.
Are you a fan of the Resident Evil franchise? What did you think of the latest installment in the series?
