By Chris Kavan - 06/04/12 at 12:25 AM CT
It was a good weekend for Kristen Stewart. With a couple of nice, new popcorn statues from the MTV movie awards, and the #1 film at the box office, perhaps I should reevaluate my opinion on her overall place in cinema.
Snow White and the Huntsman opened to a better-than-expected $56.2 million, easily topping the box office over the weekend. Even more impressive, the film managed to bring in just as many men as women, and even brought in a good deal of older audiences as well. With that kind of well-rounded demographic, the film nearly managed to top the entire run of Mirror Mirror ($62.5 million) in its first weekend out. It also has made more than Battleship has in its entire run ($55.1 million).
A lot of films get the revisionist reboot all wrong - see last year's The Thing and Conan for prime examples - but Snow White managed to ditch the fairy tale setting (for the most part) and turn in a much darker look and pull it off. While it only earned an average B cinema score, chances are it should have a decent hold in the coming weeks. While it won't make back the $170 million it cost on just domestic release, with international grosses factored in, it should do quite well and apparently sequel talks were in the works before the film came out so the numbers should justify a new film, though I'm unsure on exactly what the story would entail.
After last week's decent, but not spectacular, opening, Men in Black III dropped a lighter-than-expected 46.3% to wind up in second place with $29.3 million. The $112.5 million the film has made so far is running just behind Men in Black II ($115.6 million) in the 10-day time period.
The Avengers held strong after five weeks, dropping just 44.7% to land in third place with $20.3 million for a total of $552.7 million. Along the way, it passed The Dark Knight to move up to number 3 on the all-time movie list and also managed to make it to $550 million in a record 31 days (Avatar took 38 days for the same feat). It should wind up somewhere north of $600 million by the time it final winds down for the summer.
Battleship may have landed in fourth place, but the $55.1 million it has made so far is still tracking behind John Carter's $62.4 million total to make it the year's biggest disappointment. It dropped another steep 57%, taking in $4.8 million. No matter how they spin the foreign markets, this has got to be seen as a huge blunder for the studio.
Rounding out the top five, The Dictator was off 49% with $4.7 million for a $50.8 million total. It still has a good chance of catching up to Bruno's $60.05 million total take. That also means we probably haven't seen the last of Sacha Baron Cohen playing some wacky foreign character - though I dread to think of what he might think up next.
Outside the top five, Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom continued its gradual expansion, moving up to a whole 16 theaters and still managed to bring in $849,000 - which is still a whopping $53,062 per theater average. I still have my fingers crossed it will eventually make its way to my area, though it will only move up to about 70 theaters next week, so it might be awhile yet.
Next week, Prometheus finally hits and all those confusing trailers might finally make sense. Families will also have a new film with Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted. We'll see if either can make their mark at the box office.
