Weekend box office: Warm Bodies holds off Bullet to the Head
Brad Sturdivant
February 3rd, 2013
Every weekend in January and February is a bad weekend for movies, but possibly the worst weekend is Super Bowl weekend. Unless you have a film that brilliantly counter-markets football fans, you can basically count out Sunday of your weekend box office total. I wouldn’t say the zombie romantic comedy WARM BODIES is perfect counter-marketing, but the unusual film will flirt with $20 million on its opening weekend, which will be good enough for first place. The other new movie of the weekend was Sylvester Stallone’s BULLET TO THE HEAD, which debuted to a measly $5 million, which won’t be good enough for the top five. Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger’s THE LAST STAND, BULLET TO THE HEAD didn’t have very good reviews and was plagued with production problems and reports that Sly was unhappy with the finished product. It looks like his concerns were justified. Surprisingly, the Oscar nominated films SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, ZERO DARK THIRTY, LES MISERABLES, DJANGO UNCHAINED and even LINCOLN are still doing well at the box office, proving again how valuable that coveted Oscar nomination can be.
Next weekend sees the release of the Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy comedy IDENTITY THIEF, as well as the Channing Tatum, Rooney Mara drama SIDE EFFECTS. I feel that both films deserve better than a February 8th release date, but given the lack of laugh out loud comedies lately, I suspect IDENTITY THIEF will take the box office. SIDE EFFECTS will probably end up impressing a lot of people, but I can’t imagine it’s going to do well at the box office. Note: the numbers below will be updated as they become final.
1.Warm Bodies $20m
2. Mama $8.4m
3. Silver Linings Playbook $8m
4. Zero Dark Thirty $5m
5. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters $5m
6. Bullet to the Head $4.9m
7. Parker $3m
8. Django Unchained $4.8m
9. Les Miserables $2m
10. Lincoln $2m
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