Lee Daniels’ The Butler ruled another crowded weekend at the box office, pulling in $25 million, while the three other movies released paled in comparison.
The film, starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, has been receiving Oscar buzz since its filming began.
With a 73% at RottenTomatoes and an A Cinemascore, it has done well with audiences as well as critics and the Oscar predictions seem to be on point.
We look forward to seeing how long this film’s legs are and any best picture nominations it may see.
A surprising note in the box office results is the comedy We’re the Millers, starring Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston, which pulled in $17.7 million during its second weekend.
The film’s total has reached $69.5 million on a $37 million dollar budget. It’s not enough to see a sequel, but it’s definitely more than critics were expecting.
Coming in third this weekend is last weekend’s #1 film starring Matt Damon, Elysium. The film pulled in another $13.6 million, bringing its worldwide total to $93.3 million.
Elysium’s studio may start worrying now, as the film’s budget came in at a pretty eye popping $115 million. They’ll need to see another $50-75 million before they can rest easy.
Possibly the most surprising film this weekend was Kick-Ass 2, which opened at #4, and only pulled in $13.5 million. This film had a lot of promotion coming into the weekend and we were expecting much more.
It may be limited by its R rating, but after poor reviews, the sequel to Kick-Ass (which made $96 million) seems to be struggling to find the same audience.
The Steve Jobs biopic, Jobs, came in at a surprisingly low #7, pulling in only $6.7 million. After poor reviews revealed the film was anything but inspirational, it simply never caught on with audiences.
Most reviews reflected the same idea that Jobs didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about the icon of Apple computers. The good news is that it had a micro budget of $12 million, so it’s likely that the studio will break even at least.