Was the House at the End of the Street Where Resident Evil Lives Filled with Dredd?
Box Office Mojo
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It was a great weekend for an action thriller about two cops ambushed in a bad part of town by drug dealers. Unfortunately for Dredd 3D, that movie was End of Watch. While it dueled with House at the End of the Street for #1, Resident Evil: Retribution got evicted from the top spot in a big way.
Despite almost universally negative reviews and middling word-of-mouth, House at the End of the Street ended the weekend neck-and-neck with both the Jake Gyllenhaal cop drama End of Watch and the Clint Eastwood baseball drama Trouble with the Curve for the top of the box office, according to Box Office Mojo. The tweener screamer’s $13 million put it in a virtual tie with End of Watch and only a couple hundred thousand dollars ahead of Eastwood’s latest, which may still take the top spot when the dust finally settles.
Whether you attribute the film’s strong opening to the PG-13 rating or Jennifer Lawrence’s post-Hunger Games star power, Relativity is happy its low budget teen horror flick opened this strong on what is being considered a relatively poor box office weekend for the movie industry. Don’t be surprised if audiences vacate the House at the End of the Street in droves next weekend.
Speaking of residences being vacated en masse, Resident Evil: Retribution suffered a near 70% freefall, taking it from last weekend’s comfortable first place to a $6.7 million fifth place. That’s the steepest second weekend drop ever for a Resident Evil movie, and its $33 million total is ten million behind the previous installment. The real money for this franchise remains overseas, particularly in Japan and Asia, where the name brand and 3D will assure it the financial success required to ensure many more sequels to come.
Audiences passed judgment on Dredd 3D and the verdict seemed to be indifference judging by its dreadful sixth place $6.3 million opening. These numbers yet again go to show how overrated internet word-of-mouth and fanboy film festival ravings can be, especially when the property in question is a movie based on a cult British comic book that’s only best known to mainstream audiences as the subject of a god awful Sylvester Stallone movie from seventeen years ago (that film was considered a flop in its day, and Dredd 3D didn’t even open half as well).
Dredd’s opening also, depressingly, continues to prove that R-rated action movies are still hard sells at the box office these days. Those hoping for the start of a new Judge Dredd franchise had better cross their fingers for strong showings internationally and on DVD/Blu-ray if they ever expect to see Karl Urban don that helmet again.
Next weekend horror goes back to the kids – and maybe even the dogs given some of the early reviews – when Hotel Transylvania opens featuring the voice of Adam Sandler as Dracula. Yeah, I think I’ll wait an extra week for Frankenweenie.
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