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Box Office: Liam Neeson Takens It Again, Comes Up With $50 Million Debut!
by Joal Ryan Today
Twentieth Century Fox
The legend of Liam Neeson's action career grows.
Neeson's Taken 2 blew up at the weekend box office with an estimated $50 million, the third-largest debut ever for an October release, and probably the all-time best start for a revenge film with a leading man of a certain age.
(Hint: Neeson's 60.)
Neeson goes out all for Taken 2 promo tour
Taken 2 doubled the bow of the original Taken, the 2009 hit that kicked Neeson to the head of the kick-ass genre.
The sequel's start is the third-biggest opener for Neeson, behind only the mega-spectacles of Star Wars: Episode I—The Phanton Menace and 2010's Clash of the Titans.
The only October films to bow bigger were Paranormal Activity 3 and Jackass 3-D.
Overseas, where Taken 2 opened in some countries last week, the movie took in another $55 million, upping its worldwide total to $117 million.
Neeson's top 10 bad-ass movies
Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, the other major new release, looked only half-alive with a fifth-place, $11.5 million debut. (Halloween holdover Hotel Transylvania, by comparison, took in $26.3 million.) One saving grace for Frankenweenie: The dead-dog tale reportedly was made for an animation-cheap $39 million.
The R-rated antics of Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron were good for a solid, but not-sensational start for The Paperboy, which grossed $110,033 at 11 theaters, but saw per-screen-average bragging rights go to Taken 2.
Elsewhere, Pitch Perfect went wide, and grossed $14.7 million. To date, the $17 million comedy has grossed $21.6 million domestically.
Pitch Perfect's Rebel Wilson interviews herself
Maggie Gyllenhaal's and Viola Davis' Won't Back Down ($1 million; $4.5 million overall domestically) made a quick exit from the Top 10—and that can't help whatever Oscar chances the film had, or rather, had left.
On the plus side, the charter-school drama has become the Oogieloves of charter-school dramas—it reigns as the worst-ever opening film on more than 2,500 screens; the summer's Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure holds the distinction as the worst-ever opening film on up to 2,500 screens.
Sorry, there's not really a plus side here, is there?
Why your Oscar pool won't be complete without this film
Overall, it was another rebound weekend for Hollywood. According to Exhibitor Relations, ticket sales for the top movies were up a whopping 55 percent when compared to the same weekend last year.
Here's a complete look at the weekend's top movies, per Friday-Sunday domestic estimates as reported by the studios and Exhibitor Relations:
1. Taken 2, $50 million
2. Hotel Transylvania, $26.3 million
3. Pitch Perfect, $14.7 million
4. Looper, $12.2 million
5. End of Watch, $4 million
6. Trouble With the Curve, $3.9 million
7. Frankenweenie, $11.5 million
8. House at the End of the Street, $3.7 million
9. The Master, $1.8 million
10. Finding Nemo, $1.6 million
The hacking group, which calls itself the iPhone Dev-Team, announced its iOS 6 jailbreak less than a day after the latest Apple operating system launched last month. Apple frowns on users jailbreaking devices. The company argues that it eliminates some security features and leaves users open to potentially malicious programs prowling unauthorized app stores. Jailbreakers, however, view the activity as a fine way to take control over a device they own.
The good: The iPhone 5 adds everything we wanted in the iPhone 4S: 4G LTE, a longer, larger screen, free turn-by-turn navigation, and a faster A6 processor. Plus, its top-to-bottom redesign is sharp, slim, and feather-light.
By Rob Markman
English singer-songwriter Ellie Goulding arrived in fifth place with her new single “Anything Could Happen”, the Official Charts Company said.
