Box Office: ‘The Avengers’ Easily Sinks ‘Battleship’

Marvel’s The Avengers easily stayed atop the box office for a third weekend in a row with $55 million while three new releases, led by Universal’s Battleship, floundered badly. The Avengers just became Disney’s highest grossing domestic film of all-time and is about to overcome Star Wars for fifth highest grossing film in US history.

Coming at a distant second place with an estimated $25.3 million, Peter Berg’s adaptation of Hasbro’s board game Battleship managed to open well below one of the biggest catastrophe in Hollywood history, Disney’s John Carter which debuted in March to the tune of $30.2 million. Battleship somehow ended up costing $209 million to produce and will likely fizzle around $60 million. That’s a pathetic performance for Universal but the $227 million already accumulated at the foreign box office should dampen the financial blow on the studio.

Sp where did it go all wrong? Well, let’s face it: there is absolutely nothing surprising about the under-performance of Battleship. The trailers are cringe-worthy and just short of physically painful. A cast highlighted by the likes of Taylor Kitsch (of John Carter fame) , Rihanna and Brooklyn Decker is the total opposite of box office draw. Add that to the stupefyingly ridiculous alien plot and terrible word-of-mouth (“B” CinemaScore) and you have another huge box office bomb.

In third place, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest comedy, The Dictator, managed an acceptable $17.4 million. Unlike Battleship, the movie cost a much more manageable $65 million to produce and international sales should help make up ground. Nonetheless, the movie won’t come even close to Bruno, let alone Borat in terms of success at the US box office. The audience for The Dictator skewed 65% male and 56% under the age of 25 but the movie received a polarizing “C” CinemaScore.

Another obviously terrible idea from the get-go is the romantic comedy What to Expect When You’re Expecting? which was adapted from the popular self-help pregnancy book. Despite a large ensemble cast, the Lionsgate movie made only $10.5 million from 3,012 locations.