Like a tank manned by a handful of war-weary Americans, Fury plowed to the top of the box office this week, pounding its way to an estimated $23.5 million weekend and causing all other challengers to flee before its fearsome caterpillar tracks. It’s not star Brad Pitt’s best financial showing (his most lucrative movie, World War Z, opened to $66.4 million last year), but it’s just fine for a film premiering in late October, a time typically reserved for studio afterthoughts, cheap horror flicks and the occasional indie-tinged sleeper.
And it was more than enough to topple Gone Girl, which had won the box office title the last two weeks. The R-rated mystery thriller still collected $17.8 million, pushing its domestic take to $107 mil and spoiling any second-place aspirations harbored by The Book of Life. The spiritually tinged animated flick had to settle for third place and $17 million, penning its name in The Book of Cinematic Also-Rans.
Another movie aimed at children, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, finished fourth with about $12 million. That’s probably not the sort of second-week box office take that its makers had hoped for, but neither is it terrible or horrible. It is, in fact, ironically better than The Best of Me managed. The latest romance based on a Nicholas Sparks book didn’t impress anyone, collecting a meager $10.2 million. That makes it, according to Box Office Mojo, the lowest opening ever for a Nicholas Sparks movie, and by quite a margin. Dare we say that the Sparks is gone? We daren’t.
Final figures update: 1. Fury, $23.7 million; 2. Gone Girl, $17.5 million; 3. The Book of Life, $17.0 million; 4. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, $11.5 million; 5. The Best of Me, $10.0 million.
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