Taken 2 the Liam Neeson sequel to his surprise action hit had no resistance from the competition and easily grabed the top spot with a third all time best opening for the month of October with $50 million. The film also made $67 million overseas for a worldwide total of $117 million in a span of just a few days. Very impressive numbers for a $45 million budget sequel (are you listening, Hollywood suits?). In the second spot, last week's sleeper hit, Hotel Transylvania, is holding nicely with just 38% decline or $26.3 million. The animated spooky comedy film has become the obvious choice for families during the Halloween month, beating the studio expectations that wrongfuly thought a certain Tim Burton film will be the one (more on that later). The chick flick Pitch Perfect added more screens this week and improved its numbers by jumping from the #6 spot to #3 with $14.7 million. It might not become a bonafide hit, but it will show some profit for its makers. In the fourth spot, Looper descended from #2 last week with $12.2 million. The scifi action film might have been hurt by the release of Taken 2. It will probably finish its run with over $60 million. Debuting and bombing in the fifth spot Disney's & Tim Burton's Frankenweenie failed to meet its expectation of going mano a mano against Taken 2 for the top spot. Instead it even failed to register even half of Hotel Transylvania's numbers it its second week. With an abysmal $11.2 million, the Tim Burton vanity project just proved that no amount of advertising can save a bad concept from meeting its deserved doom. This film was a mere extended version of Burton's short film from the 80's which has been seen by practically everybody since the creation of the internet. Even with a low budget (for this kind of film) of $39 million the film will not show a profit since Disney spend more than that on advertising. As for the rest of top ten films...who cares?
Taken 1 was pure crap. No way I'm spending a dime to watch Taken 2. I might care enough to catch it on HBO next year. Might.
I thought Taken 2 was amazing. The original Taken had a better story and was more unpredictable, but Taken 2 in terms of action and unpredictability was also amazing. Paranormal Activity 4 is gonna be worth watching too I think.
I knew Taken 2 would do well. Believe it or not the first Taken did very good at the theaters as well, but I think it really earned a huge following from it's DVD release.