Weekend Box Office: May 13-15
Mon, May 16, 2011 
Courtesy of Box Office Mojo:
1. Thor - $34.7 million
2. Bridesmaids - $26.2 million
3. Fast Five - $20.4 million
4. Priest - $14.9 million
5. Rio - $8.2 million
6. Jumping the Broom - $7 million
7. Something Borrowed - $6.8 million
8. Water for Elephants - $4.2 million
9. Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family - $2.2 million
10. Soul Surfer - $1.8 million
While Thor kept the top spot at the box office as expected with a solid $34.7 million, the real story of this weekend is the spectacular performance of Bridesmaids. Yes, Hollywood is apparently shocked (shocked!) that women are indeed capable of pulling off a raunchy, R-rated comedy just as well as the guys are, but that's exactly what happened with the Kristen Wiig comedy this weekend, which also marks the best debut for a Saturday Night Live cast member in a non-SNL role since Will Ferrell went streaking in 2003's Old School. Word-of-mouth on this one has been nothing short of terrific...so you better watch your ass, Hangover 2.
On the superhero front, Thor managed to avoid the second-weekend plunges of both Iron Man 2 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, dropping a mere 47% to bring its domestic total to a not-bad-for-a-lesser-known-comic-book-character $119 million. The boost from 3D/IMAX ticket sales certainly helped with that, but hey...it's a good movie. It's doing even better overseas, where it has so far grossed $225 million.
As also predicted, no one really cared about this weekend's other new release, Priest, which earned just $14.9 million. Expect this one to sink the rest of the way to obscurity when Pirates 4 invades theaters next weekend. Fast Five, in the meantime, continues its impressive run with $20.4 million. That movie is doing even better than Thor, with $441 million worldwide and counting.
Rio's $8.2 million this weekend pushed it past Rango to become 2011's highest-grossing animated film. It faces some big competition with sequels to Kung Fu Panda and Cars opening soon, but its $125 million haul so far (not to mention the additional $303 million it's earned overseas) has given it a good run.
Next weekend marks the return of Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Have they fixed the stuff that went kinda wrong in the last two sequels? I certainly hope so.
Reader Comments