Weekend Box Office: 'Magnificent Seven' Lives Up to Expectations

This weekend's box-office race went as expected, with the week's two new wide releases taking the top two spots. Denzel Washington's The Magnificent Seven won the week, and the animated Storks cruised into second place. One of those two new movies, however, earned significantly less than most predictions had it earning.

Magnificent Seven took the number-one spot with ease, pulling in $35 million. Although some optimistic projections had the film earning closer to $50 million, the $35-million take was pretty much in line with what most observers expected. The film had the benefit of a big-name cast, which includes Washington and Chris Pratt, and decent critics' reviews. Its opening is one of the biggest ever for a Western, a genre that hasn't often produced big hits in recent decades.

Second place for the week went to Storks, an animated family film from Warner Bros, which took in about $22 million.The film faced no fresh competition for family audiences, given that the most recent family release before Storks was the underperforming The Wild Life. That film settled into eighteenth place for the week, with even the three-month-old The Secret Life of Pets outperforming it.

Storks' gross for the weekend was enough for the second-place slot, but it was substantially lower than most predictions for the film's performance. Storks was expected to pull in as much as $30 million and be in a tight race for the top with The Magnificent Seven. But that didn't happen.

Third through sixth places went to last week's number-one movie and three of last week's new releases. Sully took third place with $13.8 million, following two consecutive weeks at number one. Fourth place went to Bridget Jones's Baby, which dropped 47 percent from its opening weekend and took in $4.5 million this week. Fifth place went to Snowden, which took in $4.1 million and increased its domestic total gross to just over $15 million.

Horror sequel Blair Witch continued its disappointing run, dropping 59 percent from its already underwhelming performance last week. The movie's take this week will come in at just under $4 million, taking its total domestic gross to approximately $16 million. That's a major failure even for a movie with a relatively miniscule $5-million production budget.

The weekend was a quiet one in general. The total gross for all films in theaters this weekend was just over $103 million, a total that's up about 15 percent from last week's weak total but down almost 25 percent from the same weekend a year ago. It's now been six weeks since the top 12 highest grossing movies of the week have earned more than $100 million.

It's probably not going to get any better next weekend, either. The three new wide releases that will hit theaters the weekend of September 30 won't do as well as The Magnificent Seven or Sully. On the bright side, however, they're likely to outperform last week's crop of new movies, giving September a chance to go out on a positive note.

The film most likely to take the top spot next week is Deepwater Horizon, an action film about the real-life BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. This one stars Mark Wahlberg and will probably bring in somewhere between $15 and $20 million.

The next-biggest new release will almost certainly be Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an adaptation of the quirky but popular kids' book from director Tim Burton. Fantasies like this one sometimes hit it big, but in general, audiences tend to have limited enthusiasm for dark kids' movies like this one. Expect it, too, to earn between $15 and $20 million.

If these two films perform according to predictions, they might have a hard time getting past The Magnificent Seven. Even a mediocre hold for that film will give it a gross in the high teens next week, and that would probably be enough to get past at least one of the new films. And Magnificent Seven is enjoying good reactions from audiences, suggesting that its hold next week will likely be better than mediocre.

Bringing up the rear among next week's new releases will be Masterminds, a comedy starring Kristin Wiig, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis and Owen Wilson. This one is difficult to call, given that the members of its all-star cast sometimes deliver big comedy hits and sometimes don't. Most predictions have this one earning only a bit more than $10 million, but if conditions are just right, it could have a surprisingly good weekend.