Weekend Box Office: May 31 - June 2
Sun, June 2, 2013 
Courtesy of Box Office Mojo:
1. Fast & Furious 6 - $34.5 million
2. Now You See Me - $28 million
3. After Earth - $27 million
4. Star Trek Into Darkness - $16.4 million
5. Epic - $16.4 million
6. The Hangover Part III - $15.9 million
7. Iron Man 3 - $8 million
8. The Great Gatsby - $6.2 million
9. Yei Jawaani Hai Deewani - $1.6 million
10. Mud - $1.2 million
While I think most expected Will Smith's After Earth to underperform this weekend, I don't think that even the most pessimistic box office pundits saw this one coming. Not only did After Earth's estimated $27 million fail to best Fast & Furious 6's second weekend for the top spot, it was also trounced by the magician comedy Now You See Me. Yikes.
Now how did this happen? As easy as it may be to blame director M. Night Shyamalan, it doesn't fall on him this time. Sony did everything but put a pair of Groucho glasses over his name in all of the marketing materials to hide that the fact that he was directing this movie. This one falls on Will Smith. While giving his son multimillion dollar movies to star in, audiences aren't quite as enamoured with the idea, especially when Jaden Smith doesn't quite have the acting chops to pull off a starring role on his own just yet. Plus they'd rather see the funny, charismatic Will Smith of Independence Day, and not the bland Will Smith from After Earth's trailers.
Combine that with the film's positively toxic reviews, and we have our first box office dud of Summer 2013. Luckily, Superman is literally flying over in two weeks to bring the box office back where it belongs.
In the meantime, while Fast 6 did drop nearly 65% from its big opening last weekend, that movie has made crazy money already: $170 million domestically, and a whopping $310 million worldwide. Wow.
Audiences barely cared about The Hangover 3 last weekend, and they care less now: that dropped 62% to earn just $15.9 million this weekend. Star Trek Into Darkness and the animated Epic were tied for fouth place with $16.4 million. We'll know by tomorrow when the actual figures for the weekend come in.
There's a Bollywood movie in the top ten this weekend: Yei Jawaani Hai Deewani, which earned $1.6 million at just 161 theaters.
Next weekend, which will be the calm before Man of Steel, sees the release of the Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson comedy The Internship, the thriller The Purge, and Joss Whedon will be taking on Shakespeare with Much Ado About Nothing.
Reader Comments (2)
Trounced? Earning one million dollars more is trouncing? Give me a break.
Is Jayden Smith also playing Jen's Mom? This comment will be sure to fail.