Movies With Butter

Sometimes there’s no accounting for taste, especially where hyped-up summer releases are concerned. Despite receiving largely negative reviews, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was able to power its way to the top of the box office charts. Still, perhaps this isn’t too surprising—Michael Bay has a talent for defying bad critical reception and making a bunch of money anyway.

In any case, the revamped reptilian adolescents earned themselves $65 million over the weekend—not quite double what they were predicted to earn on their opening weekend. It just goes to show that sometimes anticipation and action will compensate for quality, if you can get enough people talking about your film.

Guardians of the Galaxy was relegated to second-highest earnings, making $41.5 million over the weekend for an already-colossal total of $175.9 million. It was followed by another of the many new releases for this weekend, Into the Storm (how is it that the two lowest-rated films earn the most?), which made $18 million.

Next came our only “fresh” release, The Hundred-Foot Journey, which made a modest $11.1 million (no shame—with two action-packed film titans occupying the top of the charts, it’s a wonder it was able to make this much). The honorable mentions were rounded off with Lucy , which made $9.3 million this weekend, and $97.3 million overall.

Finally, the least-fortunate new release, Step Up: All In, made only $6.7 million over the weekend.

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