This past weekend’s box office was uneventful at best. A movie exec described it quite well by saying, “It’s a close race to mediocrity with no winners.” But there are some good things to say about the weekend with regards to the sci-fi genre films ‘Resident Evil: Retribution’ and ‘The Dark Knight Rises’.

But first the bad news. Although the reviews of ‘Dredd 3D’ have been mostly favorable, it seems that it is only genre fans that are drawn to the film as the movie only earned $6.3 million in its opening weekend placing it in 6th in domestic earnings for the weekend. Granted, the film was not made as a blockbuster type of movie but it obviously doesn’t look like Karl Urban or the title character have the mass appeal to bring audiences to see the film.

In contrast, Jennifer Lawrence’s ‘House at the End of the Street’ (which she filmed before becoming Katniss in ‘The Hunger Games’) did moderately well with a $12.3 million box office earnings giving the film the #2 position. Most low budget horror films like this (the budget is reportedly to only have been $7 million) normally don’t do as well but the obvious star power of Lawrence helped the film come close to being number 1.

‘Resident Evil: Retribution’ actually did better than ‘Dredd’ which is surprising since it’s in its second week earning $6.7 million. The 5th film in the series has been panned by critics and although its box office earnings are not impressive in the US, overseas is where the film seems to be doing well. Internationally, ‘Resident Evil: Retribution’ earned $37.2 million over the weekend bringing its total earnings to $136.8 million, $103 million of that is from overseas ticket sales alone. To indicate how popular this film is internationally, the ‘Resident Evil’ franchise has grossed $800 million, 70% of that is from overseas sales.

While the ‘Resident Evil’ franchise earnings are a far cry away from the Billion Dollar club, this past weekend’s results have pushed ‘The Dark Knight Rises’  into the 7th spot on the list of all-time highest grossing movies. Its weekend earnings of $3.8 million in 63 markets pushed the film to a total gross of $1.066 billion. ‘The Avengers,’ which was released 2 months earlier is still at the #3 spot with a $1.511 billion gross with ‘Avatar’ at #1 with $2.78 billion.

So what movie did you see last weekend?

Source: CBM