Skip to Content

Fairytales reign supreme as ‘Cinderella’ handily wins the weekend box office

Fairytales reign supreme as ‘Cinderella’ handily wins the weekend box office

Cinderella

Director Kenneth Branagh rose to the top of the box office over the weekend, as his latest feature Cinderella topped the charts with a $70 million haul. The first place finish marks the third time Branagh has achieved that in his directorial career, following 1991’s Dead Again and 2011’s Thor. The opening weekend gross also puts Cinderella ahead of the total gross of Branagh’s last directorial effort, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, which made just over $50.5 million during its theatrical run.

Cinderella was joined in the top 10 by a fellow new opener, as the Liam Neeson-starring Run All Night finished in second place with a total of $11 million. Rounding out the top three was Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, which rose up from last week’s fourth place despite a lower overall weekend haul. Last weekend’s box office champion Chappie tumbled to fifth place this time around, earning only $5.8 million in a drop of nearly 60% from its opening total. The Will Smith-starring Focus narrowly edged out Chappie for fourth place. The Matthew Vaughn film wasn’t the only one to make a rise in the charts, as Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper continued to prove its staying power by returning to the top ten after falling out last week, staking a claim to the ninth spot.

Among limited releases, the big winner of the weekend was David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows. The horror film, which has been generating positive word of mouth at the numerous film festivals it has played at, including Sundance 2015, took home $163,000 from only four theatres, giving it a PSA of $40,750. Both the total and the PSA are the highest among limited releases for the week. Alex Gibney’s newest documentary, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, earned $60,000 in three theatres for a PSA of $20,000. Thomas McCarthy’s newest Adam Sandler-starring feature, The Cobbler, earned  $24,000 in 20 theatres for a PSA of $1,200 to go with its concurrent VOD earnings.

The top earners at the US box office for the weekend is as follows:

  1. Cinderella — $70,053,000
  2. Run All Night — $11,015,000
  3. Kingsman: The Secret Service — $6,200,000
  4. Focus — $5,085,000
  5. Chappie — $5,800,000
  6. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel — $5,700,000
  7. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water — $4,100,000
  8. McFarland, USA — $3,692,000
  9. American Sniper — $2,930,000
  10. The DUFF — $2,900,000
[wpchatai]