James Wan’s The Conjuring has gotten off to a fast start at the box office, easily beating R.I.P.D., Turbo and Red 2. It’s looking like a really bad weekend for Ryan Reynolds, who stars in R.I.P.D. and voices the main character in Turbo.
The Conjuring, the latest film from the director of Saw made a surprising $17 million. According to Entertainment Weekly, it earned a rare A- CinemaScore grade from audiences and came in just ahead of the last big horror release, The Purge. That film opened to $16.8 million and ultimately made $34.1 million in its first weekend. Conjuring is poised to beat that and should reach over $37 million. That’s great for a movie that only cost $20 million to make.
Despicable Me 2 added $7.5 million Friday and it’s on pace for $25 million by Sunday. If it does hit that mark, it’ll get to $276 million domestically after just three weekends.
Turbo is the new film from Dreamworks Animation and finds Reynolds voicing a snail with super-speed. It cost a whopping $135 million to make and only made $6.5 million Friday, in addition to the $9.7 million it made on Wednesday and Thursday. Turbo, which will be the basis of DWA’s first Netflix show, is on pace to make $28.7 million in five days, a big disappointment for a studio in need of momentum.
Adam Sandler’s Grown Ups 2 will likely stick around the Top 5, since it made $6.4 million on Friday. It opened to $41.5 million last weekend and could add around $20 million this weekend.
While Despicable Me 2 has been a huge hit for Universal, the same can’t be said for its R.I.P.D., with Reynolds and Jeff Bridges. The film was slammed by bad reviews on Friday and made just $4.8 million on its first day. According to HitFix, the official budget is $130 million, but there have been reports that it skyrocketed to $200 million.
Red 2 did beat R.I.P.D. with $6.3 million on Friday. However, it’s looking like the Summit release won’t be able to beat the $21.7 million opening Red had in 2010.
Weekend box office estimates are out on Sunday.
image: Amazon