Most weeks, a $39 million opening would be enough to dominate the box office. But Rio 2 had the misfortune to arrive while Captain America: The Winter Soldier was in peak form, and the Marvel sequel’s $41.4 million was enough to edge out the Blue Sky sequel to maintain the top spot on the charts.
In fairness, the positions were flipped internationally, with Rio 2 opening to $62.3 million and The Winter Soldier earning $60.6 million in its third week of release. Which is also really impressive in itself: Marvel movies are doing very, very well these days — by the time you read this, The Winter Soldier will have made half a billion dollars worldwide — and this has been one of the best-received of the franchise. So, hooray for Cap and his pals.
The more intriguing box-office action, to my mind, was the triumph of Oculus over Draft Day; Mike Flanagan’s clever little horror movie opened wide with an aggressive nerd-targeted marketing campaign, earning $12 million to finish well ahead of the Kevin Costner sports comedy, which came in fourth with $9.8 million.
I mean, not that I’m rooting against Costner these days, but it’s good to see a scrappy little indie come out on top once in a while.
Okay, maybe not on top, but you know what I mean.
Saw Oculus this weekend and it was much better than the commercials led me to expect! I probably would have waited for this on the movie channel despite “Amy Pond” and “Starbuck” being in it, but this one was my husband’s choice (and I usually get to pick the movies so…). Your review had me looking forward to it much more than the commercials.