Weekend Box Office Aug. 23-25: 'Mortal Instruments' and 'You're Next' Fail to Find Audiences

The tastes of this summer's movie-goers remained difficult for studios to pin down last week, as all three new films in wide release failed to find substantial audiences. The biggest surprise was low-budget horror film "You're Next," which broke a summer-long string of successful horror releases.

Given its miniscule production budget, "You're Next" isn't exactly a bomb—its $7-million weekend gross pays for its production many times over—but going into the weekend, it looked like the little film had a chance of coming out on top of the box office race. Critics loved it, and audiences had already shown a willingness to come out in large numbers for horror films. But viewers didn't seem to agree with the critics—the film got a B- Cinemascore—and it's possible that they were turned off by its apparent similarity to "The Purge," a home-invasion flick from earlier in the summer.

The sci-fi comedy "The World's End" did somewhat better, pulling in $8.9 million, but it was far from a break-out hit. The biggest new loser was "The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones"; its weak $9.3 million gross proved again how hard it is for studios to come up with a supernatural teen adventure-romance that resonates with young audiences the way "Twilight" did.

Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine" went into wide release this weekend after four successful weeks in limited release in major markets. The film grossed $4.3 million across about 1,300 theatres. That makes it one Allen's most successful films of recent years, but it also points out how the legendary filmmaker is now judged on an indie-film scale.

The week's two top movies were hold-overs. Last week's highest grosser, "Lee Daniels' The Butler" came out on top again, and the second-place spot went to the Jennifer Aniston comedy "We're the Millers."