• Box Office

World Box Office March 16-22, 2015

This weekend’s top new releases each reprised increasingly recycled genres with varying degrees of success. Insurgent, in which Shailene Woodley plays an exceptionally gifted teenager who is forced to take the weight of the world on her shoulders in order to save her dystopian society from further misery, opened in the United States to a comfortable $54 million. In doing so it finished up a hair behind the series’ first installment, Divergent, which debuted in first place at the same time last year with $54.6 at the domestic box office. These figures imply that this series essentially held on to the same audience and while a lack of growth may be slightly disappointing, Insurgent is perfectly on track to equal its predecessor’s $150 million domestic tally. It did have a significant budget increase, costing Lionsgate $110 million as compared to the original’s $90 million, though foreign sales look likely to make up for the difference. So far this weekend’s film has made $47 million overseas and is up 33% compared to Divergent’s figures in the same period last year. The biggest jump came in Brazil, where domestic and international champ Insurgent grossed $4.2 million, just a few thousand short of double the original’s opening take in that country. France was again the number one market with $5.8 million, while the UK came next at $4.5 million. Mexico chimed in as well with a welcome $3.7 million. All things considered this film is doing fine, and shows that its well-tested formula can still produce the desired reaction all over the world. Quite the opposite was true for The Gunman, starring Sean Penn, whose $5 million domestic launch gave further evidence that the greying-lone-ranger-out-for-revenge plot-line is played out. This stale performance comes directly on the heels of last weekend’s failed Run All Night, starring Liam Neeson, or the very man who launched this phenomenon. He kicked off the trend in 2008 with the break out success of Taken, which ended up grossing $226.8 million worldwide from a budget of $25 million. Its 2012 sequel Taken 2 upped the ante to $376.1 million. The original’s success, which it seems was due to a unique combination of plot, premise, and character, has shown itself several times over to be nearly impossible to emulate. A handful of Neeson-led spinoffs hoped to capitalize on this success, beginning with 2014 flop Non-Stop showed again and again that the market just isn’t there. A Walk Among the Tombstones, also starring Liam Neeson and released later that year, made just $53.1 million worldwide. Run All Night, which comes from none other than Taken director Pierre Morel, also failed to make up ground overseas. It made just $900,000 in 8 markets, including the UK, and will, in all likelihood, be the last attempt to clone his own standout series. Pure Flix’s Do You Believe, an uplifting Christian drama in the same vein as last year’s exceptionally successful God’s Not Dead shared a similar fate. It missed the mark with its faithful audience and only managed to stir up $4 million dollars in its domestic debut, despite sticking to a proven archetype. Of course, there’s no reason to throw out the whole cookbook just because a couple recipes have gone stale. Disney’s Cinderella came in second both at home and abroad with totals of $41.1 million and $34.4, respectively, for a combined weekend total of $75.5 million. While this picture is without a doubt a financial success, a 235% drop from its debut shows that it really did stand on glass slippers. Fox and DreamWorks Animation’s Home launched overseas to $19.2 million in 9 markets. It made an outstanding $9.26 million in the UK, taking first place by a comfortable margin. Next weekend it will move into 55 territories, including the US, where Kevin Hart’s latest film Go Hard also opens nation wide.