Fueled by a hefty dose of tweener love, Zac Efron’s 17 Again won this weekend’s box office sweepstakes without breaking a sweat. The high school time-warp comedy, which costars Matthew Perry and Leslie Mann, earned $24.1 million, according to studio estimates from the box office tracking firm Nielsen EDI.
The film’s haul marked another successful debut for Efron, who helped boost ticket sales with an appearance this weekend on Saturday Night Live. In 2007, the musical Hairspray, which co-starred Efron, opened at $27.5 million. Last year, Efron’s High School Musical 3: Senior Year bowed with $42 million, and while 17 Again may have fallen short of that mark, it still represents an auspicious maiden voyage for Efron’s post-Disney career. Despite the raft of critics who pooh-poohed the film, which received a 61% fresh rating on Rottentomatoes.com, audiences were more favorably inclined, giving it a strong A- CinemaScore.
Landing at No. 2, the Russell Crowe-Ben Affleck thriller State of Play pulled in $14.1 million. The film, which garnered generally positive reviews, is the latest of a string of adult-oriented dramas to lag at the box office, although its final tally actually came in somewhat higher than anticipated and was an improvement over the $12.9 million opening for Crowe’s last outing, last fall’s Body of Lies. While 17 Again mopped up moviegoers on the younger end of the age spectrum, a whopping 75% of State of Play’s audience was over 35.
Holding steady at No. 3 for the second week in a row, Monsters vs. Aliens took in another $12.9 million. The film’s impressive performance in its fourth weekend brings the grand total for the animated kiddie flick to $162 million—the highest this year by a wide margin.
Hannah Montana: The Movie dropped 61% from its opening last weekend, but the Miley Cyrus starrer still proved strong enough for the No. 4 spot with $12.7 million, boosting its cumulative gross to $56.2 million.
Rounding out the top five, Fast & Furious still had plenty of gas in the tank, earning $12.3 million in its third weekend for an overall cume of $136.7 million. The same, however, can’t be said for the Jason Statham action flick Crank High Voltage, which sputtered into a distant sixth place with a decidedly low-voltage $6.5 million.
Overall box office was up for the fourth straight weekend, surging 21% over this same weekend last year. Recession? What recession?
More box office news:
Box Office Chart: Weekend’s top 10
‘17 Again’ easily dominates the Friday box office with $9.5 million
Box Office Preview: Zac Efron’s ‘17 Again’ aims for No. 1
‘Hannah Montana: The Movie’ wins the weekend
‘Fast & Furious’ shatters records with $72.5 mil weekend
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This week, I trained a monkey to pick numbers out of a hat and compared those numbers to Joshua Rich’s movie predictions. It was a close battle, with both sides performing poorly. As usual, nearly every one of Rich’s predictions was off by millions. As for the monkey, instead of picking numbers from the hat, he tried to eat it. When that failed, he tried to copulate with it. When Bozo (I’m referring to the monkey, not to Joshua) finally picked some numbers, he ended up being wrong by a total of 8 million dollars. Not very good, but far better than Rich:
1) Rich predicted a “pretty empty theater” for “State of Play,” and claimed that it would finish outside the top 5. Instead, it came in second.
2) Rich picked “Crank” to finish third. It didn’t even finish in the top 5.
3) Rich was wrong on the positions of every single movie in his top 5 except for 17 Again.
4) How is Rich still doing movie predictions if he goes 1-for-5 on his picks? Even trained monkeys do better than that!
The trained monkey picking numbers out of a hat easily came up with better predictions than Joshua Rich. Of course, I must admit, the contest was not really fair. Despite being wrong by millions of dollars, week after week, Joshua stubbornly keeps making the same bad predictions based on the same bad analysis. On the other hand, the monkey is able to learn from his mistakes. For example, I’ve been able to teach the monkey to stop smearing feces on my computer screen. Judging from Rich’s abysmal writing and analysis eacg week, it appears that Rich has yet to learn that lesson.
REPLACE JOSHUA RICH WITH JOSH ROTTENBERG!!!!
Hard to know the recession even exists when there are so many movies doing good. Movies are practically one of the only industries that aren’t affected negatively by the recession. If anything, the affect is possitive. People’s real lives are shitty so they need to escape so they go to the movies.
No surprise here. I’m just shocked Hannah Montana wasn’t #2
http://tvdonewright.com/
It’s kind of pathetic how you are here every week with a one-person mission to bring down Josh Rich. Your life must truly be mundane if that is the most worthy cause you can dedicate your time to.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the over 35 crowd seems less enthused to see movies on an opening weekend and will see movies in their second, third and fourth week of release. So State of Play (a great movie, I was one of those people in 25% under 35) could have more staying power than other youth oriented movies.
I’m impressed with Efron. I wonder why he dropped out of footloose, maybe he didn’t want his career momentum derailed with the inevitable comparison to kevin bacon and he wants to chart his own course. It would have been a legendary role though, i hope he has something better lined up – http://www.wealthylovematch.com
I went to see 17 Again and was surprised by how much I liked it! it was laugh out loud funny and it will be on my DVD must have list when it comes out!
Great opening weekend for 17 Again with 24 million but about half of that came on Friday. It won’t have any long term box office legs but it will be a solid start on his movie career sans Disney and musicals. Meanwhile holdovers continue to pace the box office. Fast & Furious sits in the #5 position for at least one more week. Little Miss Disney banked another solid weekend at the box office with 12.7 mill. And Monsters Versus Aliens surged from 5th place Friday to 3rd place for the weekend with its 4th consecutive weekend earning double digit millions. At its current pace it will cross the 200 million dollar border within two weeks and remain the number one movie of the year until Star Trek blows it and everything else out of the water!
Wow the Matrix Came Out This Weekend 10 years ago, wow time flies
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This movie was surprisingly HILARIOUS! I was literally laughing the whole freakin’ time! It was excellent and I now have a huge crush on Zac Efron, who I only saw as pretty boy before. But he’s really talented and I think I would like a piece of that. lol.
I hate to say it but I really enjoyed “17 Again” (oh who am I kidding? I LOVE to say it!!). It was better than I expected- and Zac Efron was much more talented than I thought he’d be.
This is not just good for Zac Efron but for Matthew Perry, who hasn’t done well with past movies. I watched one movie that Matthew starred in and it was AWFUL! Bad acting, bad script, everything! This new movie did well for Zac, for those who remembered him from High School Musical, and for Perry for those who remember him from the hit NBC series Friends.
First off people commenting, cut the guy some slack. Predicting the box office is tough work these days, honestly. There has not been one predictable weekend this year, at all. No one saw “Jonas Brothers” completely bombing, or “Madea” opening to $40 million, or even “Paul Blart” as the number 1 movie, two weeks in a row. Yeah, we all pretty much saw “17 Again” opening well, but not exactly this well.
Second, just so I can be one of those picky cyber-nerds, “Hairspray” did not open to #1 when it was released in July 2007- it was beat out by the Adam Sandler comedy “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” in it’s first weekend, although “Hairspray” ended up having the highest opening for a musical at the time…until “High School Musical 3″ of course, which starred…Zac Efron! Hey, we’re at the beginning of the cycle again!
well it looks good but my friend says it was not good but i think it looks awesome
I saw this movie with my kids and LOVED it. Loved the 80s and early 90s references. Honestly, I thought Matthew Perry was the weakest but still somewhat funny. Zac impressed me and I love Leslie Mann. Really hilarious!!!
Actually, 17 again sucks
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Zac Efron was cute and predictable in this film (which I enjoyed, by the way), but my daughter was crushing on Sterling Knight, who played the son. I think he’s the one to keep an eye on.
I am surprised that Crank2 was even in the top 10 considering the little to no advertising it recieved in the regular media. I saw the movie on Saturday and liked it. Too bad Jason doesn’t have a good PR Team to back him.
I enjoyed 17 Again. Sure, it’s not the next Citizen Kane, but then again, it wasn’t trying to be. The casting was great and the dialogue was clever. My (not-so-secret)crush on Zac Efron had waned, but it’s definitely back in full force.
Now Zac has asperations to be in the new Star Wars spin-off?http://hidensneek.com/2009/04/20/the-force-is-strong-with-zac-efron/
http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2009/04/20/top-5-teen-movies-other-than-heathers-that-should-be-musicals/
Zac as Ferris Bueller? HA
@ Preston
“and for Perry for those who remember him from the hit NBC series Friends.”
Just the way you worded that, like Friends was some well kept secret, made me laugh. Lol.
I must admit, the contest was not really fair. Despite being wrong by millions of dollars, week after week, Joshua stubbornly keeps making the same bad predictions based on the same bad analysis.. http://two.xthost.info/svensty/cape-bre44/map.html
Can’t believe that State of Play isn’t dominating box office. Though I haven’t gone to see it yet, if it’s even half as good as the UK mini-series, audiences should be flocking to it. I mean Russell Crowe almost always delivers…
The TV trailer (http://displacedbrett.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/state-of-play) makes the movie look great. Also, it features a great song, “Unstoppable” by Minutes Til Midnight that does a great job of setting the mood. So yah, personally I’m way excited for this film.
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Kudos, to 17 Again! I don’t really care what the critics say, audiences are looking to go out and enjoy a nice Friday-night movie, and 17 Again happened to be just that. It was a very enjoyable film, and mostly everyone came out of the theatre with a smile on their face. I was impressed with Efron, as well, who I think has a bright future ahead of him. I say don’t judge him just by his pretty face, he’s trying really hard to break out of that.
Anyhow, 17 Again probably is the best movie out in theatres right now, now that Slumdog is out… and Hannah Montana is in
zac efron looks super hot in the movie it is an amazing film oved it except it should not be pg 13 it is an adult fil