Box Office Results: Joe Dominates Easter Weekend with $51.7 Million

The ComingSoon.net Box Office Report has been updated with studio estimates for the weekend. Click here for the full box office estimates of the top 12 films and then check back on Monday for the final figures based on actual box office.

Easter weekend saw the release of the long-delayed action sequel G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Paramount), directed by Jon Chu (Step Up 3D), and starring Dwayne Johnson, Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum, D.J. Cotrona, Adrianne Palicki, Ray Park, Byung-hun Lee, Jonathan Pryce and Ray Stevenson. The movie was originally meant for release last June, but Paramount decided to delay the movie in order to convert it into 3D, which proved to be fruitful as it opened early on Wednesday night with 7PM screenings and grossed $ 10.5 million in its first full day on Thursday. It had a nice 47% bump on Good Friday to take in $ 15.5 million building to a three-day weekend gross of roughly $ 41.2 million for the weekend and $ 51.7 million in its first four days. That’s slightly less than the $ 54.7 million grossed opening weekend by the original movie G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra in early August 2009, but it was also opening in the more difficult and often front-loaded Easter weekend.

Internationally, the military movie that eschews American patriotism did even bigger business, grossing $ 80.3 million over the weekend, the biggest international opening of the year. IMAX reports that the movie grossed $ 4.8 million on the 303 domestic IMAX screens with another $ 2.3 million in the 78 international IMAX theaters.

DreamWorks Animation’s caveman comedy The Croods, featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds and Catherine Keener, fared well over the holiday weekend thanks to strong word-of-mouth, bringing in $ 26.5 million to take second place. It was down 39% from its opening weekend but the strong second weekend brought its ten day total to $ 88.6 million.

Opening in third place was Tyler Perry’s Temptation (Lionsgate), a dramatic thriller based on his play “The Marriage Counselor” and starring Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Lance Gross, Kim Kardashian, Vanessa Williams, Robbie Jones and Brandy Norwood, which grossed roughly $ 22.3 million despite only playing in 2,047 theaters. Averaging over $ 10,000 per location, it’s the Atlanta media mogul’s 10th movie to open over $ 20 million in the past eight years, taking advantage of the built-in audience from his presence in film, television and theater, despite the title and tonal change from the original stageplay.

Antoine (Training Day) Fuqua’s White House invasion movie Olympus Has Fallen (FilmDistrict), starring Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett and Rick Yune, fell to fourth place with $ 14 million, down 54%–chances are it lost a good portion of its potential male business to “G.I. Joe”–having grossed $ 55 million since opening last week.

Sam Raimi’s fantasy prequel Oz The Great and Powerful, starring James Franco, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams, took fifth place with $ 11.6 million as it creeped ever closer to becoming the year’s first movie to gross $ 200 million domestically. So far, it’s grossed $ 198 million in North American during its first month in theaters and it’s done slightly better internationally with $ 214 million. With a worldwide total of $ 412 million, it’s the biggest global hit of the year so far.

Despite having author Stephenie Meyer as a producer and despite opening in 3,202 theaters , the sci-fi romance The Host (Open Road), adapted from her book by Andrew Niccol and starring Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, Jake Abel, Diane Kruger and William Hurt, didn’t fare so well, opening with just $ 11 million to take sixth place. It averaged a pitiful $ 3,200 per theater, proving that even having the author of “The Twilight Saga” involved with your movie doesn’t necessarily make it “the Next Twilight.”

The Halle Berry thriller The Call (TriStar Pictures) took seventh place with $ 4.8 million and a three week total of $ 39.5 million.

The academic rom-com Admission (Focus Features), starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, added another $ 3.2 million in its second weekend, taking eighth place, which was down three spots and 47% from its opening weekend. It has grossed $ 11.8 million so far.

Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers (A24), starring Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens and James Franco, added more theaters this weekend but still dropped nearly 45% as it took in another $ 2.7 million for ninth place with $ 10.1 million grossed so far.

This week’s Top 10 movies brought in an estimated $ 139 million, which was down just 4% from last Easter when The Hunger Games reigned supreme followed by the sequel Wrath of the Titans with $ 34.2 million and Tarsem’s Mirror Mirror with $ 19 million.

Opening in limited release, Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines (Focus Features), his follow-up to Blue Valentine, this one starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes and Dane DeHaan, opened in four theaters in New York and L.A. where it brought in roughly $ 270,000.

Two movies that played at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival opened in select cities this weekend with Rodney Asher’s conspiracy doc Room 237 (IFC Midnight) bringing in $ 30,000 in two venues, while Quentin Dupieux’s quirky comedy Wrong (Drafthouse Films) opened in 16 theaters where it took in less than $ 18,000.

Back on the international front, Japan opened its very first Japanese language IMAX title Dragonball Z in 16 of the country’s IMAX DMR theaters where it brought in $ 450,000 over its two-day weekend.

Click here for the full box office estimates of the top 12 films.