The Weekend Report: Age of Ultron Does It Again

In which I run down the big winners (and losers) at the box office this weekend.

And once again, to nobody's surprise, Age of Ultron ruled another weekend at the box office.  Although it took a real hit after its nearly $200 million debut, it's still doing better in its second week than most movies do in their first.  Not even this week's new release came anywhere near its total.

Hot Pursuit actually did a lot better than I personally thought that it was going to do.  While I suspected that it would at least do top-ten levels of business, I never imagined that it would sit comfortably at this week's #2 spot.

It was invariably helped along by the unique demographic that came out in relative droves to see it.  Its audience had virtually no overlap with Age of Ultron: mostly the elderly, and most women at that.  It drew in people that wanted to laugh, but didn't want to sit through multiple explosions to do so.

As I haven't seen the movie yet, I really can't comment as to its quality.  Those leaving the theaters, however, seemed to have a pretty divided opinion of it: half complaining that the trailer was funnier and half surprised at just how funny it was.  But with plenty of forced lesbian jokes and jabs at female body image, I doubt it's one that I'd find especially funny.  After all, I'm supposed to hate all comedies.  Right?

Other than that, the usual crowd is still clutching to their last few weeks on the list, as this week's debuts for Mad Max: Fury Road and Pitch Perfect 2 should take out the bottom two holdouts.  So my advice is to check out Cinderella if you haven't already, because that should be disappearing from most theaters after Thursday.  Home and The Woman in Gold probably don't have much time left either.

Box Office Standings:

1)  Avengers: Age of Ultron - $77.2m
2)  Hot Pursuit - $13.3m
3)  The Age of Adaline - $5.6m

4)  Furious 7 - $5.2m

5)  Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 - $5.1m

6)  Ex Machina - $3.4m

7)  Home - $3m

8)  The Woman in Gold - $1.6m

9)  Cinderella - $1.5m

10)  Unfriended - $1.4m

Also, somewhat off topic, I realize that I've been truant with my Unreality Companions these last couple of weeks (the first of which being that it was posted a week late, the second of which simply owing to my crazy schedule).  Both of these missing articles will show up this week (starting either tonight or tomorrow) and Friday's should go up on Friday as expected.  As always, I'll work toward being more punctual with my posts, work schedule be damned.

So what movie did you see in theaters this last weekend?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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