Rounding out the weekend of February 24, 2013, Identity Thief reigned supreme, leaving the box office battlefield victorious. Box Office Aftermath is an ongoing column dedicated to recap the weekend’s total ticket sales. Each week, combatants enter the cinematic war zone, bloodthirsty for your cash. But there can only be one true winner. In Box Office Aftermath, we will take a look at the numbers, how previous contenders fared, and provide a brief analysis of the results.

Melissa McCarthy has luck on her side because that shlock of a film, Identity Thief, was able to steal the show from both new releases: Dark Skies and Snitch. Both movies are far superior, but Thief had numbers on its side with the amount of theaters you could find it in.

Snitch did not fare too well either. As a new release, with The Rock, it was only able to gain $13.16 million at the box office, which is pretty poor for a new release with a big name action star. 

Dark Skies on the other hand failed to even make it into the top five. It’s a shame too. I actually anticipated the movie to be pretty terrible, but found it enjoyable. With such a low budget, there’s no reason the film wouldn’t be optioned for a sequel. It has a good cast, great effects, and decent scares. While it was unfortunate that it was unsolicited to critics before its release, Dark Skies is sadly going to be a hidden gem of the year.

I’m not sure how Escape from Planet Earth was able to stay in the top three. My guess is parents must really want to get their kids out of the house. It could also be the 3D ticket sales too. 

Love seemed to conquer all this weekend because Safe Haven grossed more ($10.45 million) than A Good Day to Die Hard ($10.16 million). Silver Linings Playbook is still hanging on and could possibly gain a spike with an Oscar win by Jennifer Lawrence.

Beautiful Creatures is not doing well for Warner Bros., which dropped over 50% in ticket sales and has thus far only grossed $17 million on a $60 million dollar budget. Worldwide it has gained a total of $30 million. I can’t say a sequel is looking too promising.

Other Oscar contenders did pretty well. Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Life of Pi, and Lincoln are still managing, while Hansel and Gretel won’t die. Now that the Oscars are over we can expect better movies to start rolling out.

(Click on the image below to enlarge the chart)

Until the next weekend bout, this has been your Box Office Aftermath.

Source: Box Office Mojo