After DreamWorks Animation was forced to make tonnes of redundancies last month following the failure of Rise Of The Guardians, they’ll have a bit of cheer this morning with the news that The Croods has topped the US box office with $44 million. It’s a decent start, which is about on par with the studio’s Megamind and How To Train Your Dragon.
Also doing well was second place finisher Olympus Has Fallen. Audiences obviously liked the idea of Gerard Butler fighting terrorists in the White House, as the film took more than almost anyone had predicted, with $30 million in its first three days. It’s great news for Butler, whose star power has been in the balance after a string of flops.
There was less cheer for Admission, which tanked with just $6.4 million on its opening. That’s the lowest start for any Tina Fey live-action movie.
After a great start in three cinemas last week, Spring Breakers expanded onto 1,100 screens and into the top 10 with $5 million. It’s certainly not bad for a movie from a tiny, indie distributor, which has been relying on word of mouth to gets its name out there.
Take a look below for the US box office top 10 for the weekend of March 22nd-24th.
| Rank | Title | Weekend Gross (millions) | Total Gross to date (millions) |
| 1 | The Croods | $44.7 | $44.7 |
| 2 | Olympus Has Fallen | $30.5 | $30.5 |
| 3 | Oz The Great And Powerful | $22.0 | $177.5 |
| 4 | The Call | $8.7 | $30.9 |
| 5 | Admission | $6.4 | $6.4 |
| 6 | Spring Breakers | $5.0 | $5.4 |
| 7 | The Incredible Burt Wonderstone | $4.2 | $17.3 |
| 8 | Jack The Giant Slayer | $2.9 | $59.0 |
| 9 | Identity Thief | $2.5 | $127.7 |
| 10 | Snitch | $1.9 | $40.3 |
Oz The Great And Powerful has stayed top of the US box office, adding another $42.2 million. Disney will be pleased as while major movies often drop more than 50% of their take in their second weekend, Oz eased off by just 46%.
The question this weekend wasn’t whether Oz The Great And Powerful would top the US box office, but how much it would take. While expectations meant that anything under $80 million would have been seen as a disappointment, if the final figures hold up, Oz just scraped in with $80.2 million.
Bryan Singer’s Jack The Giant Slayer is the first mega-budget movie of 2013, but if Hollywood was hoping it would break the box office bank and point to a bumper year ahead, they’ll be disappointed. The film took $28.1 million in its first weekend in US cinemas, which isn’t a complete disaster, but considering the movie cost nearly $200 million to make, it’s now going to have to rely on becoming a major success outside North America if it hopes to make its money back.
I have to admit I wasn’t that impressed with the recent Jack The Giant Slayer trailer, which came across as a little silly, but I still have hope that director Bryan Singer can pull off this fantastical fairytale. This latest poster certainly makes it look a little more cool, with a man (presumably Nicholas Hoult’s Jack) preparing to enter the watery mouth of a stone giant.