Weekend Box Office Results for April 27-29, 2012

Weekend Box Office Results for April 27-29, 2012o

The only real story for the weekend was the poor performance of The Five-Year Engagement. Many people expected it to win the weekend, but it finished a dismal fifth and grossed about half of what its investors were hoping for, although the studio now officially proclaims that it performed approximately as expected. That film didn't even finish first among the new releases, thanks to a last-minute surge by The Pirates, which finished a surprisingly strong second overall. (That could change when the preliminary estimates become official. Films #2 through #5 are essentially tied.) The audience members for The Five-Year Engagement were predominantly female (64%), and they didn't much care for the film (a weak B- from CinemaScore).

Safe and the Raven also performed poorly, but that was expected. They took in about $7M each, although Safe got a solid B+ CinemaScore from the audience. The coupling of a high score and a low gross indicates that it is a solid genre film which pleased its niche market, but that the market for that genre is simply a very small one.

Think Like a Man repeated as champion in a very slow weekend. The total weekend gross of $110.1M for all films was the lowest of the year, and will likely remain so until the post-Summer doldrums, if not beyond. That total was far behind the $158M grossed in the equivalent weekend last year, which was buoyed by a monstrous $86 million opening from Fast Five. The negative trend will likely reverse next week, when The Avengers alone is expected to take in about as much as all of last year's films added together!