Weekend Results 3rd to 6th April 2014: The Lego Movie builds a strong start but The Winter Soldier takes the weekend...

As expected, Captain America: The Winter Soldier opened to very strong numbers over the weekend.  CA2 took in over 6m which is some 32% higher opening over the original film from 2011. Of course, captain this time around, had the much hyped "Avengers" effect, which clearly helped to a much improved result.
His opening was 5th biggest opening from marvel's universe to date but is currently the lowest of the Phase 2 films (with both Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 opening bigger).  I should note that Captain was never expected to match Thor 2 let alone get anywhere near the impressive start from Iron Man 3 here.  Anyway, Captain is now well positioned for total near or above 20m which will be an excellent result.  Second place belonged the already worldwide hit "The Lego Movie".  Lego managed to open to 5.7m which is a very strong opening for an animated film here in australia.  In fact it's opening was in the same ballpark as Tangled which opened just after christmas 2011.  The Lego Movie now has 2 to 3 weeks of holidays ahead of it as the school holidays roll out across the country which should mean very strong holds in the coming weeks putting the Lego Movie in with a shot at reaching 30m.  At this point I see a 25m total at minimum given this opening.

After the top 2 films, it became a bloodbath for holdovers.  In fact only 3rd, 4th and 5th were able to hold onto screens.  The remaining films in the top 20 lost as much as 70% of the screens they were on, indicating how poorly films in general have been performing over the past few weeks.  Only a few films were able to avoid the general bloodbath where many films had drops > 70% (highest dip in the top 20 was 83%) which is surprising given we are heading into the holidays.  Typically, drops like this occur after the holidays have ended.

3rd place belonged to last weekends opener Noah with dipped 51% for a further 2.2m and 8.2m running total.  I get the feeling that Noah was expected to perform a little better here but it should be able to make to 12 to 13m at this point but after that will depend on how it holds up during the holidays.  Mr Peabody not surprisingly took a major hit this weekend (57%) with the Lego Movie sucking up all the families over the weekend.  Unless Peabody finds an audience over the holidays he might struggle to make it to 10m which would have the target pre opening.  Rounding out the 5 was the Monuments Men which has amassed a tidy 8m over the past 4 weeks.

My original prediction for Captain America 2 of 7m (posted last tuesday) wasn't all that far off the mark given CA2 has already made 6.4m to date.  It appears while i was little high for CA2, i undercut The Lego Movie as my 5m prediction was short of the final figure of 6.1m (including previews).

Here is the top 20:

TW	LW	Movie	Rating	Distributor	Weekend Gross	% Change	Screen Count / Change		Average	Total Gross	Week #
1	N	Captain America: The Winter Soldier	M	Walt Disney	$ 6,058,676	-	571	-	$10,611	$ 6,355,027	1
2	N	The Lego Movie	PG	Roadshow	$ 5,711,151	-	537	-	$10,635	$ 6,129,297	1
3	1	Noah	M	Paramount	$ 2,232,347	-50.6%	387	0	$5,768	$ 8,187,229	2
4	2	Mr. Peabody and Sherman	PG	Fox	$ 1,068,668	-56.2%	508	0	$2,104	$ 5,204,958	2
5	3	The Monuments Men	M	Fox	$ 597,785	-49.8%	341	0	$1,753	$ 7,927,272	4
6	4	Ride Along	M	Universal	$ 274,449	-55.2%	121	-14	$2,268	$ 2,238,825	3
7	5	Need for Speed	M	Dreamworks	$ 183,193	-68.9%	120	-120	$1,527	$ 4,089,475	4
8	6	300: Rise of Empire	MA15+	Warner Bros	$ 101,565	-77.0%	89	-208	$1,141	$ 8,412,611	5
9	11	The Dallas Buyers Club	MA15+	Pinnacle	$ 101,322	-29.5%	45	-16	$2,252	$ 2,836,825	8
10	14	Wadjda	PG	Entertainment One	$ 87,333	-4.1%	25	2	$3,493	$ 359,909	3
11	8	Non-Stop	M	Studiocanal	$ 84,399	-69.0%	50	-65	$1,688	$ 5,759,535	6
12	13	Tracks	M	Paramount	$ 71,922	-39.6%	75	-59	$959	$ 2,195,503	5
13	12	12 Years a Slave	MA15+	Icon	$ 55,248	-59.2%	49	-51	$1,128	$ 7,463,853	10
14	7	Pompeii	M	Icon	$ 49,960	-82.9%	66	-108	$757	$ 1,344,679	3
15	19	Le Week-End	M	Paramount	$ 37,699	-12.1%	36	-7	$1,047	$ 1,073,821	7
16	10	The Wolf of Wall Street	R18+	Roadshow	$ 35,707	-77.6%	16	-28	$2,232	$ 23,254,775	11
17	N	Main Tera Hero	M	Eros Australia	$ 33,356	-	10	-	$3,336	$ 33,356	1
18	17	The Raid 2	R18+	Madman	$ 32,611	-53.1%	18	-1	$1,812	$ 135,688	2
19	9	Cuban Fury	M	Studiocanal	$ 31,901	-80.0%	50	-129	$638	$ 781,635	3
20	N	Maan Karate	M	Ayngaran	$ 29,162	-	4	-	$7,291	$ 29,162	1