LOS ANGELES / NEW YORK: Ride Along, a buddy cop comedy starring Kevin Hart and Ice Cube, collected $41.2 million in ticket sales to win the weekend box office race, leaving another new release, political thriller Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, in the dust.
Last week’s box office winner, the Afghanistan war tale Lone Survivor, was second with ticket sales of $23.2 million, according to studio estimates provided by tracking firm Rentrak.
In a weekend crowded with four new films, The Nut Job, the first animated release from Open Road Films, collected $20.6 million in ticket sales to claim third place.
Starring Chris Pine as the late author Tom Clancy’s fictional CIA analyst, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit took in $17.2 million over the first three days of the Martin Luther King holiday weekend for the number four spot.
Ride Along, which hip hop singer and star Ice Cube also produced, has so far surpassed Hollywood’s $28 million opening weekend forecast and was the biggest three-day King Day holiday weekend opening ever. While only 10 of 47 reviews were favourable, according to the site Rotten Tomatoes, 94 percent of the audience surveyed on the site wanted to see it.
“The timing was really right on this one,” said Nikki Rocco, president for domestic distribution at Universal Pictures which released the film, that costed about $25 million.
Weekend sales for The Nut Job ranked as the biggest opening for an animated film not produced by a major studio, beating out the $16.8 million for 2009 film Coraline. Nut Job cost about $30 million to make after tax rebates.
Rounding out the top five, Disney’s animated hit Frozen took in just under $12 million.
Academy Award nominee American Hustle was sixth with $10.6 million in ticket sales. Two other top-nominated films, Gravity and 12 Years A Slave, returned to theatres after having largely ended their runs. The low-budget horror film Devil’s Due opened with $8.5 million in sales for the number seven slot.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 22nd, 2014.
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