Weekend Recap: Perseus defies gods, Date Night

I was feelin’ so good. It was supposed to be two weeks in a row with a perfectly predicted top five at the box office – but the estimators screwed up. “Date Night” was estimated to have just beaten out “Clash of the Titans” for first place this weekend by a close $1 million but it seems they were $2 M over on their estimate. I don’t know who these estimators are, but they infuriate me.

Still, both “Clash” and “Date Night” underperformed this weekend and the box office was down nearly 30 percent from the week before. It didn’t take long for poor reviews and word of mouth to hack into the total gross for “Clash” and mixed reviews on “Date Night” kept it from scoring that No. 1 spot – apparently.

1. Clash of the Titans – $26.6 M (weekend) … $110.2 M (gross)
2. Date Night – $25.2 M … $25.2 M
3. How to Train Your Dragon – $24.8 M … $133.4 M
4. Why Did I Get Married Too? – $11 M … $48.5 M
5. The Last Song – $9.8 M … $42.2 M
6. Hot Tub Time Machine – $5.4 M … $36.9 M
7. Alice in Wonderland – $5.3 M … $319. M
8. The Bounty Hunter $4.2 M … $55.9 M
9. Diary of a Wimpy Kid – $3.9 M … $53.6 M
10. Letters to God – $1.1 M … $1.1 M

The box office was weak enough that “Letters to God” managed to make the top ten with as few as $1.1 million.

Outside of the re-count comeback, it was an easy weekend for box office predictions. The only film with great reviews in this whole list was “How to Train Your Dragon,” and as such it stayed in third (and nearly went up a spot) while almost everything else slid down accordingly.