Captain America defeats newcomers at the box office

Captain America: The Winter Soldier proved to be too formidable against a bunch of new releases in its second week. When on Friday it seemed like Rio 2 was going to claim the weekend top spot, the First Avenger threw his mighty shield and knocked it out on Saturday and Sunday taking $41.3 million (a 56% decline from its debut last week) and claiming the first spot. Rio 2 almost pulled the upset with $39 million which is a better opening than the first Rio movie. The animated film is the only new children's movie offering since Mr Peabody and Sherman (#10 with $1.8 million)was released six weeks ago. The Muppets Most Wanted (#9 with $2.1 million)doesn't count since it was aimed at nostalgic adults and children has mostly ignored it. Debuting in the third spot is the horror film Oculus with a solid $12 million which is more than twice its $5 million budget. The movie could finish its run with $40 million earnings or more. Kevin Costner and sports films have always being a winning combination. Now an older Costner might not be as magnetic as he used to be, but Draft Day opening debut of $9.7 million is decent. Dropping to the fifth spot from number 3 to give room to new releases, Divergent is holding nicely with $7.5 million. the young adult film has now earned $124 million domestically. Crashing from the #2 spot to #6 is the pseudo-biblical Noah which took $7.4 million for a domestic total of $84 million in three weeks. As expected the film is doing better overseas than domestically with $162 million to date. This means the film will show profit for its studio, but if any lesson was learned from this film is that if the studio had been a little more respectful of its source it could have been a bigger film. Like God's Not Dead is proving. The Faith based film took the seventh spot with $5.4 million, a mere 29.3% decline from last week. This low budget film has the better hold of any movie released this season and so far has grossed $40 million which is kind of unheard of for these kind of evangelical films that usually go straight to dvd after poor theatrical runs. Only a handful like Fireproof and Courageous has made any money. Look for it to finish its run probably close to or besting the total numbers for Son of God($58 million).