Movies With Butter

Of the four new releases duking it out over the lion’s share of the weekend revenues—a sequel to a successful graphic novel-turned-movie, a biography of a digital age icon, a drama about murderous billionaires, and a political drama based on historical fact—few would’ve expected the political drama to top the box office charts. Nevertheless, that’s exactly how it played out.

Lee Daniels' The Butler earned both the highest ratings and the highest revenues of this weekend’s new releases, earning $25 million. While it’s not exactly soaring over its predicted gross (or over that of any of the releases, for that matter), it at least met its predicted range, which is more than can be said for the other new releases.

The Butler was chased by last week’s We’re The Millers, which earned another $17.7 million for a total of $69.5 million. Elysium fell from its perch atop the charts over the weekend, earning $13.6 million for a total of $55.9 million.

After that came one of the other new releases, Kick-Ass 2, the disappointing follow-up to the much more successful Kick-Ass; the sequel debuted to only $13.5 million (roughly $10 million short of its projections), where the first opened to $19.8 million. Another of last week’s releases, Planes, also managed to cling to the upper levels of the charts, adding $13.1 million to its previous earnings for a sum of $45 million.

The other new releases did not fare so well as to make it to the five top-earning films this weekend. Jobs made it to the seventh slot in the charts, earning $6.7 million, and Paranoia sits at unlucky thirteen with only $3.5 million.

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