Man of Steel (our review here) grossed $113 million for the weekend (plus another $12 million from Thursday night sales), good enough for second best of the year behind Iron Man 3, and setting the record for June releases ahead of Toy Story 3‘s $110.3 million in 2010. The news comes at a crucial time, as before this, Hollywood was just about to stop making comic book movies.

Elsewhere, This is the End (our review here) earned $20.5 million for the weekend, $32.8 million over five days. Not bad, but not as good as I was expecting when I showed up to a 10 pm screening on a Wednesday night and the place was sold out. Younger kids buying tickets to other movies and sneaking in, maybe?

In a distant second place, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s apocalypse comedy This is the End earned $32.8 million through its first five days ($20.5 million for the three-day weekend). That figure is noticeably lower than Pineapple Express ($41.3 million), and also off from Tropic Thunder ($36.8 million). Still, it’s a good start for a modestly-budgeted movie in which the “stars play themselves” set-up could theoretically have been a turnoff for casual moviegoers. [BoxOfficeMojo]

The budget for This is the End is listed at $31 million, so for all intents and purposes it’s a hit. Basically, all comedies should be budgeted just below whatever number will keep the studio from focus-grouping it to death. This is the End didn’t feel like it had been. Unless the focus groups just happened to be a room full of junior college stoners going, “I dunno, bro, maybe add more jizz jokes?” Not that I’m complaining.

Meanwhile, The Internship (reviews here) dropped a whopping 60 percent from its opening weekend. Which is strange, because Pete Hammond said “Google my words: It’s a winner.” Seriously though, he actually said that. It’s funny because he’s supposedly a film critic. Does it still count as criticism if your only audience is studio PR reps looking for pull quotes? Because I’m pretty sure that’s called copywriting.

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I don’t pretend to understand the appeal of horror movies, but at this point it seems clear that horror fans are the most enthusiastic and least discerning of all moviegoers, which coincidentally are the exact qualities I’m looking for in a woman. The Purge didn’t look very good and by most accounts it wasn’t, but it had people with knives in creepy masks, and people with knives in creepy masks is enough. Reportedly produced for $3 million, it earned $36.4 million in its debut this weekend. I’m not good at math, but I’m pretty sure that’s, like, a thousand some percent of its budget. For comparison, After Earth cost $130 million to produce, and it earned $27.5 million in its opening last weekend.

Produced for just $3 million, The Purge debuted to a fantastic $36.4 million. That’s a record for original R-rated horror ahead of last year’s The Devil Inside ($33.7 million), which is particularly impressive considering the movie didn’t have a supernatural angle. [Editor's note: Uhh... if you say so.] The Purge‘s opening was also twice as much as producer Jason Blum and star Ethan Hawke’s Sinister, which started off with $18 million last October.

Going in to the weekend, it looked like the best comparable title was The Strangers ($21 million), which opened around the same time in 2008 and also centered around a home invasion. The fact that The Purge wound up so much higher can be attributed to the movie’s unique, intriguing premise—what if all crime was legal for 12 hours once a year? Universal’s marketing team made the smart decision to hone in on this in all of their material, and as a result were able to expand the movie’s reach beyond the typical horror audience. According to Universal, that audience was 56 percent female and 56 percent under 25 years of age. [BoxOfficeMojo]

56 percent female and 56 percent under 25 years of age, eh? Looks like I just found a new place to pick up chicks. “Hey, girl, what would you do if true love was only legal for one day a year?”

Meanwhile, shock of all shocks, The Internship, which sounded so good, and cost a reported $58 million, managed only half of The Purge‘s take and landed all the way down in fourth, with $18.1 million. I like to imagine that upon hearing the news, Vince Vaughn shrugged, and managed “Huh? Oh. That sucks,” through a mouthful of bacon-wrapped scallops.

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The results are in, and Will Smith’s midas touch was no match for M. Night Shyamalan’s kiss of death, as their collaboration, After Earth, opened in third place, behind 6 Fast 6 Furious and Now You See Me, with $27 million. The studio had been planning for $35-40 million.

Will and Jaden Smith’s sci-fi adventure After Earth wound up in third place this weekend with a very disappointing $27 million. That’s in between last year’s notorious sci-fi bombs John Carter ($30.2 million) and Battleship ($25.5 million). It’s also half of MIB 3 ($54.6 million) and The Karate Kid ($55.7 million), which were the last two movies from Will and Jaden, respectively.

The audience was 51 percent male and 60 percent were 25 years of age or older. They gave the movie a “B” CinemaScore, which suggests middling word-of-mouth that should keep the movie from holding on well. Add in the fact that Man of Steel is on the immediate horizon, and it’s unlikely that After Earth winds up with more than $70 million or so. [BoxOfficeMojo]

Which is bad, considering the budget is estimated to have been around $130 million, making After Earth a certified flop unless it kicks ass worldwide. (Which it might, foreigners love Will Smith almost as much as Johnny Depp). The media pile-on has been so bad that it’s actually tempting to, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, feel bad for poor M. Night Shyamalan. Of course, it would be a lot easier to feel sympathy if, after five straight sub-50%-on-RottenTomatoes movies in a row, and three below 20, he could just once admit that something he made wasn’t perfect, instead of blaming the audience and our ignorant, unworldly lack of European sensibilities. IT WAS ABOUT TREES, YOU FLIPPER-HANDED SIMPLETONS! Letting M. Night direct again, and another vanity project for Will Smith and his dumb kid no less, Sony was basically daring audiences not show up. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

I just hope this doesn’t affect Jaden’s line of drop-crotch pants. I’m sure one little setback isn’t enough to stop a veritable fashion revolution.

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I sat next to a fidgety gay couple at my screening of Star Trek, but I thought it was just because I lived in San Francisco. Turns out it was actually part of a broader trend (THANKS, OBAMA). That trend being, that girls and youngins largely stayed away from Star Trek 2: 2 Trek 2 Furious. I guess that’s what they get for building a spaceship that looks like a flying saucer with three penises.

Trek earned $70.6 million for the weekend, which is decent, but not as much as the first, or as much as Paramount wanted or expected. Sucks to be you, bros.

While it’s usually unfair to knock a movie for opening in line with its predecessor, it certainly feels like the “disappointment” label is applicable in this case. All signs suggest the 2009 Trek is very well-liked (it has a strong 8.0 rating on IMDb) and Paramount’s marketing did a decent job walking the sequel tightrope (a balanced approach of promising more-of-the-same and offering something new). Additionally, there was four years of ticket price inflation and the addition of 3D and IMAX premiums. Based on historical comparisons, this should have added up to around $100 million for the four-day weekend, which was what Paramount was publicly forecasting going in to the weekend.

Trek‘s demographics tell an interesting story that contributes to that theory: the audience skewed heavily male (64 percent) and older (73 percent over the age of 25). In comparison, the first movie did a better job reaching women (only 60 percent male) and younger audiences (only 65 percent over 25). [BoxOfficeMojo]

It would’ve had more female viewers, but a lot of girls got left on the curb when they kept calling it “Star Wars.” It’s just as well, they probably would’ve just sat there texting the whole time anyway.

My guess is, they didn’t sell the villain enough. Iron Man 3 made $175 million opening weekend, and that was at least advertised as Iron Man fighting The Mandarin. Star Trek 2 had the crew that we already knew, plus an unnamed British dude with really messy bangs (“Run for your lives! He’s all drippy!”) JJ Abrams likes to keeps his projects all secrety, like he did with his Trek fanboy handjob reveal halfway through this one, but that probably works against you somewhat when it comes to makin’ money. To extend the metaphor, secret handjobs are nice, but you make a lot more cash when you just shout “Hey! Over here! Handjobs!”

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This statement has a lot of caveats, but we’ll ignore them for now because it’s a fun story: this weekend, a film adaptation of the great American novel earned more than $50 million on the same weekend a Tyler Perry-produced romantic comedy earned less than $5 million. So this is what pleasant surprise feels like. Huh. Neat.

1) Iron Man 3, BV $72,472,000 Total: $284,893,000
2) The Great Gatsby, WB $51,115,000
3) Pain and Gain, Paramount. $5,000,000 Total: $41,608,000
4) Tyler Perry Presents Peeples, LGF $4,850,000
5) 42, WB $4,650,000 -Total: $84,732,000
6) Oblivion, Universal $3,864,000 Total: $81,655,000
7) The Croods, Fox $3,600,000 Total: $173,215,000
8) The Big Wedding, Lionsgate, $2,500,000 Total: $18,288,000
9) Mud, Roadside Attractions, $2,343,000 Total: $8,363,000
10) Oz The Great and Powerful, BV $802,000 Total: $229,985,000 [Indiewire]

I’d like to think the general populace was just too smart for a movie that once was called “Meet the Peeples,” which sounds like a fake Tyler Perry movie name generated by computer, and that sat on the shelf for a few years before it was released and generally looked pretty horrible, but let’s be honest, none of those things have ever slowed Tyler Perry down before. More than likely, his cultish fan base just didn’t realize or recognize it as a “Tyler Perry movie,” since he didn’t really do much to it creatively beyond stick his name on it. Peeples reportedly cost around $15 million, and almost certainly won’t make that back. It’d be nice if this slowed Tyler Perry down at all, or forced him to try to make better movies, but shit rolls downhill, so most likely it’ll probably just hurt the talented people who agreed to be in it, like Craig Robinson and David Alan Grier and Kerry Washington. Hopefully it won’t hurt much, because Craig Robinson is awesome. He nodded “sup” to me once at the Hollywood Improv. Cool story, huh.

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