Battle at the Box Office 8/11

The Ninja Turtles managed to defeat the Guardians of the Galaxy this weekend, although they didn’t reach the same opening heights.  Turtles made $65.6 million, the fourth highest ever August opening and this August is already set to be the biggest in history and it’s easily the biggest month of this summer.  This Turtles also made more in one weekend than the CG animated TMNT made in it’s entire run.

Guardians dropped a little over 50% from it’s opening weekend to $42.1 million, putting it over $176.5 million for it’s two weeks out.  It’s on track to be the highest grossing movie of the summer, at least domestically.

Into the Storm took third with $17.3 million, up slightly from director Steven Quale’s last movie, Final Destination 5, which made $18 million.  It’s way off from Twister though, it’s obvious predecessor, which made $41 million in 1996, so that’s even more adjusted for inflation.

The Hundred Foot Journey took fourth with a decent counter programming start of $11 million.  It’s way down from other older, female skewing August releases of years past, like Julia & Julie and Eat, Pray, Love, but it should have a slow,steady theatrical run.

Lucy rounded out the top 5 with another $9.5 million.

Step Up All In, despite bringing back the most “popular” of it’s various dancers, had a horrific $6.5 million opening, barely good enough for sixth place.  It’s now the lowest opening movie in the series, going even lower than it’s predecessor’s terrible opening.  This should hopefully kill this series once and for all.