In the end it was no contest: doomsday action- thriller The Maze Runner easily took line honours at Australian cinemas last weekend.
The adaptation of James Dashner's young adult novel starring Teen Wolf’s Dylan O'Brien as a young man whose memory is erased before being dropped into a post-apocalyptic maze, grabbed $3.7 million including previews.
Pro-rata, that’s even stronger than the US debut of $US32.5 million and it positions the Fox film to clean up during the school vacation.
Paramount’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a distant second, conjuring up $2.3 million in its second weekend, bringing the tally to $9.9 million. With a total of three weeks’ vacation ahead around Australia, the Turtles could end up with as much as $20 million.
However business fell away badly beneath the top 10 as nationwide takings inched up by 1% to $10.7 million according to Rentrak’s estimates.
Disney’s Planes: Fire & Rescue fetched a mediocre $623,000 in its debut after taking $277,000 in previews but should rally as primary school kids head to cinemas.
Stop-motion animated pic The Boxtrolls, from the studio that made Coraline and ParaNorman, fared even worse, opening with $578,000 and $657,000 with previews. One exhibitor had low expectations, describing the film as “dark, scary and humourless.”
After tanking in the US, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’s lousy $339,000 bow is no surprise for a film which critics say tries to replicate the first instalment of 2005 and fails.
Phillip Noyce's The Giver plunged by 56% to $299,000 in its second outing, raking in $1.2 million thus far, a disappointing result for an entertaining futuristic sci-fi thriller starring Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Brenton Thwaites and Odeya Rush.
The House of Magic, a Belgian animated film about an abandoned kitty’s quest to save his zany adoptive household from the clutches of a heartless real estate agent, entered with a modest $139,000 including sneaks.
The art house curse seems to have struck again as Zach Braff’s Wish I Was Here, a comedy-drama in which he plays an aspiring actor who’s married to Kate Hudson and whose dad is dying, took $94,000 on 33 screens. Including previews and festival screenings the total is a more respectable $161,000.
Another victim of the curse is Lukas Moodysson’s We Are the Best!, the saga of the friendship between three girls in Stockholm in 1982, which scraped up $13,000 at nine cinemas.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE September 18-21
|
|
Title |
Week/ Screens |
Box Office |
% +- |
Total
|
|
1 |
The Maze Runner |
1/305 |
$3,557,934 |
NA |
$3,707,374 |
|
2 |
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles |
2/449 |
2,296,947 |
-48 |
9,902,902 |
|
3 |
Planes: Fire and Rescue |
1/436 |
623,031 |
NA |
982,772 |
|
4 |
The Boxtrolls |
1/326 |
578,548 |
NA |
657,946 |
|
5 |
Step Up: All In |
2/241 |
459,751 |
-43 |
1,489,813 |
|
6 |
Into the Storm |
3/295 |
439,045 |
-56 |
4,415,230 |
|
7 |
Guardians of the Galaxy |
7/134 |
428,267 |
-38 |
24,895,674 |
|
8 |
The Hundred-Foot Journey |
6/116 |
370,448 |
-36 |
10,772,406 |
|
9 |
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For |
1/121 |
333,842 |
NA |
339,402 |
|
10 |
The Giver |
2/206 |
298,921 |
-56 |
1,208,867 |
Source: Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia