Box Office Aftermath: ‘Ender’s Game’ Proves Victorious with $27 million

Rounding out the weekend of November 1-3, 2013, Ender’s Game dominated over the competition, leaving the box office battlefield victorious. Box Office Aftermath is an ongoing column dedicated to recapping 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.

Gavin Hood and the team from Summit Entertainment proved haters wrong this weekend when Ender’s Game took the top spot, earning itself a cool $27.01 million in domestic ticket sales. Not a very large opening for a big budget blockbuster, but respectable enough based on the boycott factor and a relatively non-mainstream sci-fi property. However, I am not sure if it will reach its $110 million budget with Thor: The Dark World coming out this weekend and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire two weekends later. It will be tough, but there may be hope.

Bad Grandpa and team Jackass held it together fairly well for the film’s second weekend in theaters. Dropping only 37 percent, the prank comedy earned another $20.01 million at the box office, raising the total domestic gross to $61.56 million. If that doesn’t scream sequel potential, I don’t know what does.

in third place comes Last Vegas. The all-star AARP actors were hardly enough to draw a crowd with the film only hauling in $16.33 million. It’s definitely going to make back its $28 million budget, but hopefully not enough to warrant a sequel.

Also opening up this weekend and claiming fourth is Free Birds. Parents must have wanted their kids to stay away from the space war and old people this weekend and focus more on a bunch of time traveling turkeys. The animated feature earned a measly $15.8 million and does not deserve a penny more. Sadly there won’t be anything for the kiddies until Frozen later this month.

Closing out the top five is Gravity. Holding down the fort in its fifth weekend, the Alfonso Cuarón epic took home another $12.82 million to add to its now $218 million total domestic gross.

12 Years a Slave saw a nice expansion this weekend, more than doubling its theater count to 410. The exhilarating slave drama earned a respectable $4.79 million.

In only its second weekend, The Counselor managed to fall from fourth to ninth, over 56 percent, scrapping by with $3.37 million.

About Time saw a limited release this weekend into 175 theaters. Hardly making a dent in the box office, the time traveling rom-com walked away with $1.07 million. Not too bad for the amount of theaters it was in, but not something to get worked up about.

Another small indie, sparking conversation throughout Hollywood that released this weekend, is Dallas Buyers Club. Debuting at only 22nd, the movie only opened in 9 theaters, but managed to earn itself $260 thousand. Far better average theater sales than About Time that’s for sure.

(Click the image below to enlarge the chart. All figures are domestic box office.)