Movies With Butter

This weekend, the box office bore witness to an epic earnings battle between two rich, famous, charismatic, self-destructive film protagonists: the “Great” Jay Gatsby, and Iron Man 3’s Tony Stark. As glitzy and popular as The Great Gatsby was, it was ultimately no match for the superhero allure of Iorn Man 3.

Iron Man 3 remained at the top of the charts over the weekend, earning another $72.4 million for a colossal total of over $284.8 million. While it’s a significant dip in the numbers from last weekend, it’s still making more than some films earn in their entire time they spend in theaters.

The Great Gatsby similarly did quite well over the weekend—$51.1 million on its opening weekend, above even its large predicted gross. While it didn’t make quite as much as Iron Man 3—really, what does—it still managed to make a very good showing of itself.

By comparison, the numbers pulled in by all the other films in theaters were tiny. The third-highest earnings went to holdout film Pain and Gain, a somewhat diminutive total (relatively speaking) of $5 million, adding to its sum of $41.6 million. Last week’s other new release, Tyler Perry’s Peeples, fell just below this at $4.8 million on its opening weekend. Finally, our last honorable mention, 42, clings to the higher levels of the charts with weekend earnings of $4.6 million, for a total of $84.7 million (numbers from Box Office Mojo).

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