Jessica Chastain: Box Office Queen?; ‘Mama’ & ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Atop the Box Office
It wasn’t even two years ago that no one knew who Jessica Chastain was. But after starring in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and appearing in a slew of movies ranging from The Help, Take Shelter and Lawless, it looks like she is establishing herself as an A-list star. Fresh off a Golden Globe win and Oscar nomination for her work in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, the actress now finds herself with two movies atop the box office.
Chastain easily bested Hollywood veterans Mark Wahlberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger with Universal’s low-budget PG-13 horror film Mama which opened with an estimated $28.1 million over the 3-day weekend. In the movie, supernatural events occur after her character rescues her two young nieces from the woods. Oddly enough, the film was lightly marketed and the studio was only expecting mid-teen millions for the weekend. Mama‘s audience skewed 61 percent female and the film received a solid “B-” CinemaScore.
Sliding softly into second place is Zero Dark Thirty with $17.6 million. The film, which went wide last week, continues to reap benefit from being one of the top Oscar contenders for Best Picture and will likely continue to have drawing power as we get closer to the Academy Awards ceremony.
Shooting to the third spot with $11.3 million was David O’Russell’s romantic comedy Silver Linings Playbook which expanded to over 2,500 locations. Despite the film being released more than two months ago, the Weinstein Company is hoping that strong word-of-mouth and Oscar buzz will eventually push this release above the $100 million mark.
Turning to the disappointing side, Gangster Squad dropped 47% to fourth after an underwhelming opening weekend. The ill-reviewed gangster drama cost Warner Bros. $60 million to produce and it looks unlikely that the film will make it to that mark on the domestic market.
Meanwhile the detective drama Broken City, starring the usually dependable Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe, opened with a disappointing $9 million. But this isn’t nearly as underwhelming as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comeback movie The Last Stand which opened at the tenth spot with $6.3 million. Apparently, no one wants want to watch a 66-year old action movie star, Arnie.
What did you watch this past weekend? Let us know in the comments!
Weekend Box Office |
|
|---|---|
| 1. Iron Man 3 | $72.5M |
| 2. The Great Gatsby | $51.1M |
| 3. Pain and Gain | $5.0M |
| 4. Tyler Perry Presents Peeples | $4.5M |
| 5. 42 | $4.7M |
| 6. Oblivion | $3.9M |
| 7. The Croods | $3.6M |
| 8. The Big Wedding | $2.5M |
| 9. Mud | $2.3M |
| 10. Oz The Great and Powerful | $0.8M |
6 Comments
Good for Jessica Chastain! She impressed me right away when I first saw her in The Debt, I think I’ve seen about 5 of her films now and she’s so versatile. I hope she wins an Oscar too!
Yea I really liked her work in The Debt… and The Tree of Life, and The Help, and Zero Dark Thirty… She is in too many movies ahah
It almost feels like the “powers that be” are behind her sudden surge to stardom, isn’t it? She went from nobody to starring in half the movies coming out the last couple of years.
I think it’s more a question of timing. Not all these movies were shot around the same time but they eventually were released during a very short period of a few months.
Chastain’s star power is certainly rising, although to be fair both Zero Dark Thirty and Mama had other things going for them marketing rise. Not sure she could open a movie by herself yet
Yea, Zero Dark Thirty is really coasting on Bigelow and its Oscar buzz while the marketing for Mama basically never even alludes to Chastain’s name in the trailer or posters. I still doubt she is much of a recognizable face to the average moviegoer at this point in time,
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