Positive memories of its predecessor helped ‘Taken 2’ secure the top spot at the box office this weekend, pulling in $50 million; that’s enough to cover the film’s $45 million budget and it’s also double the debut of the original ‘Taken’.
While the reviews for ‘Taken 2’ were anything but encouraging, movie goers like it when a studio follows up a well-liked movie with a solid sequel that’s fairly similar but different enough to feel fresh. In other words, stick to your formula without falling into a rut. The only challenge now: matching the original’s $145 million domestic haul. Stay tuned.
‘Hotel Transylvania’ dropped to second place with $26.3 million, bringing the film’s domestic gross thus far to a very nice $76 million (against an $85 million budget). That’s good news for Adam Sandler, whose recent films haven’t done so well at the box office.
‘Pitch Perfect’ expanded nationwide this weekend, moving up from sixth to third place and pulling in $14.7 million. The movie doesn’t really have any direct competition for its audience (younger women) right now, so it should be able to continue to pull in decent numbers throughout the rest of October.
‘Looper’ fell from second to fourth place this week, pulling in $12.2 million. Rounding out the top five, ‘Frankenweenie’ opened at number five, pulling in only $11.5 million against its $39 million budget. Tim Burton’s brand has been slipping of late (‘Dark Shadows’, anyone?) and opening against ‘Hotel Transylvania’ was a baffling move at best. But the real killer here is that ‘Frankenweenie’ is just a very niche film: black and white, stop-motion animation is not something that draws huge box office crowds, period.
