'Captain America 2' wins Friday

'Captain America 2' wins Friday

Rio 2 finished second on Friday and may win the weekend.

The best of the new films was Heaven is for Real, the latest faith-based hit, which grossed a surprising $8M Friday, enough for third place. It opened Wednesday, and has already grossed $15M. It has an outside chance to win the entire weekend, given the unpredictability of such a film on Easter Day. It will certainly exceed expectations, as these faith-based "outsider" films often do.

The Johnny Depp film utterly bombed, grossing only $5M. Consider this: Depp's other recent failures, The Lone Ranger and Dark Shadows, each grossed about double that on opening day. This film, Transcendence, is headed for about a $12M weekend. The studio hoped to double that. Is Johnny Depp finished as a wise investment? Here's what Forbes had to say.

I think Forbes missed a key point. It's important to distinguish between Depp's appeal in kiddie flicks, and his lack thereof in other films.

Depp still seems to be fairly solid in family flicks, but he does not have, and really never had, any marketability in films which target adult audiences exclusively. Here's his track record for the decade 2005-2014 (opening weekend in parens):

Transcendence, 2014, (Projected $12M in 3400 theaters)
The Rum Diary, 2011, ($5M in 2200 theaters)
The Tourist, 2010, ($16M in 2700 theaters)
Public Enemies, 2009, ($25M in 3300 theaters)
Sweeney Todd, 2007, ($9M in 1200 theaters)
The Libertine, 2005 (art house distro)

You can keep going back, but you'll find nothing better than the occasional moderate indie success (Finding Neverland, e.g.) and some utter bombs. Before he broke into the mainstream in Pirates of the Caribbean, he was in a string of abject failures like From Hell, The Ninth Gate, The Astronaut's Wife. Even his earlier films that you think of as successes (Donnie Brasco and Don Juan de Marco, e.g.) were really not what Variety would call box office boffo. No Depp-starring movie for adult audiences has ever grossed $100M, although some of them are terrific movies, at least in my opinion.


In other weekend news:

Haunted House 2 was far behind, at $4M, and will struggle to reach double figures for the weekend, although that is no surprise. Disney's Bears grossed a bit more than $2M, placing it on a trail which leads to about $5M, the lowest opening weekend ever for a Disneynature film, but again that's about where the experts pegged it.