Box Office: Audiences still bananas over “Apes,” “Purge” packs them in, “Sex Tape” stalls

boxA second big weekend for “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” arrives as Friday night audiences eat up the box office again. Deadline.com figures that’ll translate out to a $30-34 million weekend, a 50-60% from last weekend’s opening.

The sleeper hit of last summer, “The Purge,” is riding weaker reviews but stronger brand ID to a healthy $25-28 million opening. Considering how little was spent on it, it’ll be in the black by next weekend.

The other wide opening for the weekend of July 18-20 is “Sex Tape,” which despite suffering from rather inept marketing is looking toward a meekly respectable $17-18 million opening. The movie isn’t very good, so word of mouth may smack it Saturday-Sunday.

“Jersey Boys” has exited the top ten, as did “Begin Again. Dinesh D’Souza’s “America” documentary should clear the $10 million mark this weekend, provided more of its audience doesn’t wind up in the obituaries before getting around to it.

But Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” expanding to 33 screens from its opening 5, is still showing a very strong per-screen average and will have made its first million by Sunday night.

Jon Favreau’s “Chef” cleared the $25 million mark, “Belle” cleared $10 and “Godzilla” will fall just a teensy bit shy of being another of the year’s rare $200 million hits, as it loses its last few screens.

 

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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