Box Office Report: Comedy cops and a volcano can’t topple The Monuments Men

Looks like it was a slow weekend at the Aussie box office, with only one film making more than a million dollars. Let’s just blame the start of the AFL season, shall we? George Clooney’s The Monuments Men took the top spot again with $1.71 million, while car-racing pic Need For Speed rose from third spot to second with $0.96 million. 300: Rise of an Empire added another solid $0.92 million to its total.

Of the three new films on the chart, Ride Along, starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart, fared the best with a third place opening. Faring not so well was action/disaster extravaganza Pompeii, which only managed an opening weekend of $0.63 million. The film really should have opened higher than that. Coming in at #7 was British comedy Cuban Fury starring Nick Frost. The film did quite well considering that Frost is yet to be proven as a leading man, and it is the sort of film that will benefit from positive word of mouth over the coming weeks.

This week brings the release of two vastly different films. The first is Darren Aronofsky’s much-awaited Biblical epic Noah, which stars Russell Crowe as the titular ship builder. The film is Aronofsky’s first major studio film and his first film since the critically acclaimed Black Swan back in 2010. There has been word of some trouble behind the scenes, with Aronofsky butting heads with the studio over the final cut of the film. However, early word suggests that the film is a visually stimulating success, but that it strays quite far from the original story.

Expect to see something unique and thematically challenging. The other film releasing this week is Dreamworks Animation’s Mr. Peabody & Sherman, which is based on animated segments from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show in the 60s. The film has already made an impressive $81 million at the US box office and has received mostly favourable reviews.

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

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