Ender’s Game, which recently opened in China, brought in a strong $10M at the box office in its first week, boosting its worldwide total to $112M.
Meanwhile, in second place, the Harrison Ford-starring adaptation of Orson Scott Card‘s sci-fi novel Ender’s Game took $10.96 million in its opening six days, showing on 110,947 screens with 2.1 million admissions.
That’s a powerful showing when you consider it took $28 million in its opening weekend in the U.S.
Source: THR
Ender’s Game, in its second week at the box office, suffered from the God of Thunder’s debut with Thor: The Dark World but still climbed up to $44M after pulling in $10M over the weekend.
This coming weekend nothing too big is opening, but next week Lionsgate’s box office giant The Hunger Games: Catching Fire will blaze into theaters. Predictions for Ender’s Game were originally around $75M and the movie looks on track to do just about that. The film has performed very poorly overseas, with only $9M in box office sales to date. Ender’s worldwide take is currently at around $53M.
Source: BoxOfficeMojo.com
Ender’s Game launched the International Fleet’s forces last night on All Hallow’s Eve and Variety is reporting a solid $1.4M in the box office, placing it third for the night behind Gravity at $1.6M and Bad Grandpa at $1.4M.
Paramount’s “Bad Grandpa” posted a similar late-night launch of $1.4 million a week ago and has topped $40 million in its first week. “Gravity” also took in $1.4 million from its first late-night shows while “Oblivion” and “After Earth” both grossed $1 million in their respective preview shows; “Pacific Rim” grossed an impressive $3.6 million in previews while “Carrie” took in $725,000.
I actually find it encouraging and impressive that Ender’s Game is doing better on its Thursday than Oblivion, even though Oblivion didn’t impress at the box office much domestically in the end. I wasn’t sure how Halloween would affect things since teens and parents alike would presumably be busy spending time with friends and family doing Halloween activities rather than going to see the movie. We’ll just have to wait and see how the movie does over the coming weekend!
If you saw the movie last night and are feeling a mixture of emotions ranging from disappointed to thrilled, be sure to go see Ender’s Game again. Despite the common complaint that the film is terribly paced, you may just find that a second viewing will let you enjoy the film for what it is. Happy NovEnder 1st!
Variety is reporting that Ender’s Game is currently on track for a $27 million dollar debut in the United States, which is disappointing to say the least when it comes to a film that had a $110M budget excluding marketing costs.
However, the article does go on to say that all might not be lost.
But word of mouth on the Gavin Hood-directed film has been decent (“It’s surprisingly solid,” one source says), while an overseas boost for the sci-fi movie could keep the “Ender’s Game” franchise alive for further installments. There are 12 novels in the “Ender’s Game” series as well as short stories and comics.
It’s tough to say at this point what will happen. November does kick off the holiday movie season, but Ender’s Game is definitely hurt by strong releases later in November including Thor: The Dark World and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. With Gravity still pulling in great numbers, audiences could potentially turn to Ender’s Game to continue their fixation with space and zero-gravity.
What do you think, Launchies? Will audiences give Ender Wiggin a shot or will the box office numbers be down, just like the enemy’s gate?
When Ender’s Game first made the move from March 2013 to November 2013, its only competition was Singularity, which is currently stalled in pre-production.
Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Ender has new competition to be released the first weekend in November, a movie called White House Down directed by Roland Emmerich.
White House was acquired by Sony based on a script by James Vanderbilt, who also penned this summer’s The Amazing Spider-Man and Total Recall. Mythology Entertainment is producing.
The movie revolves around a paramilitary takeover of the White House. Emmerich (2012, The Day After Tomorrow) and Sony are in the process of casting.
With Emmerich directing it sounds like it could turn out to be decent competition for Ender, though it may end up being hurt by its twin brother movie White House Taken starring Gerard Butler.
Out of the twin Snow White movies, Snow White and the Huntsman and Mirror Mirror, SWATH seems poised for winning between the two shows, so something similar could happen between two White House movies about the exact same plot.