The presence of Beyoncé Knowles plus appropriately sultry/trashy advertising scored a big hit for Screen Gems this weekend, with Obsessed raking in a cool $28.5 million between black audiences and thriller audiences. Depending on how it holds up, the airport novel of a film
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could compete with The Exorcism of Emily Rose for the title of highest-grossing Screen Gems release ($75 million). It's a marketing triumph and a minor April surprise.
Three more films debuted in wide release and all posted comparatively strong numbers. That's a somewhat controversial claim for The Soloist, whose $9.7 million, fourth-place finish doesn't seem too robust. It's certainly not overwhelming, but for an arty, detached film that was moved from awards season to April, it's not awful. Rogue's Fighting finished slightly ahead with $11.4 milion, beating last spring's street-brawling movie, Never Back Down. And Earth, the DisneyNature documentary that opened Wednesday, picked up $8.5 million for the weekend -- the second biggest all-time opening for a documentary -- and $14.2 million for the five days. Good for them.
Out of the top ten, the critically panned The Informers -- Senator Entertainment's first attempt at a theatrical release -- floundered with $300,000 in semi-wide release. Senator, you will recall, is the distributor that has kept All the Boys Love Mandy Lane on the shelf for approximately forever. Make of that what you will.
Last weekend's main holdovers, 17 Again and State of Play each fell around 50%. The latter is a bit of a disappointment, as I had hoped that the exceedingly entertaining film would coast at least slightly on good word-of-mouth.
The full top 10 after the jump.
Filed under: New Releases, Box Office
Continue reading Weekend Box Office: 'Obsessed' Explodes in Niche Market; Three More Have Strong Debuts
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