Box Office Report: Clooney and his Monuments Men take the top spot

It seems that Australian audiences just couldn’t resist the prospect of seeing George Clooney, Matt Damon and Cate Blanchett steal priceless art back from the Nazis over the past weekend. The Monuments Men, which Clooney also directed, opened at #1 with an impressive $2.3 million, taking the top spot from action sequel 300: Rise of an Empire. Based on a true story, The Monuments Men has a phenomenal cast that also includes Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and Hugh Bonneville (TV’s Downton Abbey). Reviews for the film have been relatively average (read our review here) so it is unclear whether the film will hold strongly in the coming weeks.

Action pic Need For Speed had a solid opening of $1.5 million but was unable to overtake Rise of an Empire, instead idling in third place. The film, which is the first leading role for Breaking Bad alumna Aaron Paul, also opened at #3 at the US box office over the weekend, gathering a disappointing $17.8 million.

This week sees the release of two CGI-heavy action films. The first is Paul W.S. Anderson’s disaster epic Pompeii, which stars Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington and Aussie actress Emily Browning (Sucker Punch). The film is currently sitting on 24% on Rotten Tomatoes, which normally doesn’t bode well, but you don’t go into movies like this expecting a critical masterpiece. Reviews so far have stated that you get what you should expect from the film, so go in expecting a visually impressive action film and you might be pleasantly surprised! The other major debut is Gothic action film I, Frankenstein starring Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight). The film re-imagines Frankenstein’s monster as a modern-day demon fighter and was filmed in Victoria. It has already made $71 million worldwide and is currently sitting on 4% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Frozen finally opened in Japan within the last week, where it had an impressive debut of $9.4 million, bringing its worldwide tally to $1.027 billion, making it the 15th highest grossing movie of all time! If the film continues doing well in Japan it is likely to finish within the top 10 highest grossing movies of all time. What the what!! Also of note was the opening of the Veronica Mars movie in the US. The film’s budget was raised by appealing to fans to donate through Kickstarter, and it was also released on the same day on VOD. The fact that the film still made $2 million at the US box office from what is quite a narrow fanbase is particularly impressive.

Veronica Mars has had some limited Australian screenings in the past week and is now available to purchase on iTunes. Read our review here.

All figures from The Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia and Box Office Mojo.

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