Many thought that after the first GI Joe film failed to set the box office alight, that would be the last we’d see of it on the big screen, but the franchise has returned with GI Joe: Retaliation. The movie may have opened lower than its predecessor, taking $54 million versus $41 million in its opening weekend (although Retaliation can add another $10 million from Thursday), but it’s more than many had thought.
With a very healthy $130+ opening worldwide, Variety reports that this is more than enough to get the ball rolling on a third movie. It’s early days so nothing has been set for this third movie yet – there’s no director or writers at the moment – but assuming Retaliation’s gross holds up over the coming weeks, they’ll probably want to move pretty fast on it.
Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor placed third on the US box office chart with $22 million in its first three days. It’s his best opening for a non Madea movie and marks his ninth film to gross more than $20 million on its opening weekend (only Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis have had more $20m+ debuts).
The Host had less to cheer about, as despite hope that it would capture the Twilight crowd, it opened in sixth spot with $11 million. As with the likes of Beautiful Creatures, it’s struggled to capture the interest of teens, who seem to be all-or-nothing in their adoration of these potential franchises.
Take a look below for the US box office top 10 for the weekend of March 29th-31st.
| Rank | Title | Weekend Gross (millions) | Total Gross to date (millions) |
| 1 | GI Joe: Retaliation | $41.2 | $51.7 |
| 2 | The Croods | $26.5 | $88.6 |
| 3 | Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor | $22.3 | $22.3 |
| 4 | Olympus Has Fallen | $14.0 | $54.7 |
| 5 | Oz The Great And Powerful | $11.6 | $198.2 |
| 6 | The Host | $11.0 | $11.0 |
| 7 | The Call | $4.8 | $39.4 |
| 8 | Admission | $3.2 | $11.7 |
| 9 | Spring Breakers | $2.7 | $10.1 |
| 10 | The Incredible Burt Wonderstone | $1.3 | $20.5 |
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.
There seems something rather fitting about the idea of the free-spirited and experimental James Franco signing up to star in a movie by the slightly nutty Harmony Korine (Gummo, Mister Lonely, Trash Humpers). That said, with Emma Roberts also possibly coming on-board, it would appear Korine’s got a slightly bigger budget this time around and presumably therefore won’t be making anything quite as strange as some of his earlier work.