Gravity has continued its impressive box office run, topping the US box office for a third week with $31 million, once more dropping less than 30% from the previous weekend (most films fall around 40-60% each week). It’s made $170 million in North America so far and is expected to gross another $100 million before the end of its run.
It certainly saw off the newcomers. The remake of Carrie was the best new opener with $17 million, which means that while it should still be profitable as it didn’t cost too much to make, it’s on the low end for recent horror releases, which is slightly surprising with Halloween not far away.
Escape Plan came fifth with $9.8 million, showing once more that after his time as Californian Governor, Armie isn’t the box office name he used to be, even if he teams up with Sylvester Stallone – something that in the 80s fans would have died for.
The only other new opener in the top 10 was the Wikileaks drama, The Fifth Estate, which took a dismal $1.7 million. It was a bit of a disaster, as it’s the lowest opening in DreamWorks history, and the worst start for a movie opening at over 1,500 cinemas this year. With bad reviews and mediocre audience reaction, it’s unlikely to do much better in the coming weeks.
Outside the top 10, 12 Years A Slave did well, taking $960,000 on just 19 screens. That’s an incredibly impressive $50,000 per screen, suggesting it’ll do extremely well as it expands nationwide in the coming weeks.
| Rank | Title | Weekend Gross (millions) | Total Gross to date (millions) |
| 1 | Gravity | $31.0 | $170.5 |
| 2 | Captain Phillips | $17.3 | $53.3 |
| 3 | Carrie | $17.0 | $17.0 |
| 4 | Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 | $10.1 | $93.1 |
| 5 | Escape Plan | $9.8 | $9.8 |
| 6 | Prisoners | $2.0 | $57.2 |
| 7 | Enough Said | $1.8 | $10.7 |
| 8 | The Fifth Estate | $1.7 | $1.7 |
| 9 | Runner Runner | $1.6 | $17.5 |
| 10 | Insidious Chapter 2 | $1.5 | $80.9 |
While some weren’t sure whether Gravity’s incredible visuals would translate into box office success, the film is now a bona fide hit, taking $44 million in its second weekend to top the box office once more. That’s just a 20% drops, which is incredibly unusual for a film that took over $50 million in its first outing (indeed it’s the best hold ever for such a film outside the holidays).
After a few low budget horror flops, news of the genre’s demise has been extremely premature, as Insidious Chapter 2 has scored the second highest September opening ever with $41 million, behind only last year’s Hotel Transylvania.
Insidious cost only $1.5 million to make but grossed around $100 million at the worldwide box office, so it’s not too surprising a sequel has been in the works. Now a US release date of August 30th, 2013 has been set and