It was a good weekend for A Nightmare On Elm Street, with Freddy clawing his way straight to the top of the US box office, taking $32.2 million. It’s a great start for a movie that cost less than $30 million to make and which had some very mixed reviews. While a couple of years ago horror remakes seemed like a licence to print money, since then audiences have become a lot more discerning, but Nightmare seems to have overcome that.
The only other new entry in the top 10 is the Brendan Fraser flick Furry Vengeance, which sees the star as a real estae developer getting attacked by CG critters that don’t want him to build on top of their forest. The film took a fairly weak $6.5 million, which is bound to be seen as a disappointment for a movie that only a douple of months ago many thought could be a breakout family hit.
However the real big news of the weekend was outside the US, where Iron Man 2 opened in 53 territories, a week ahead of its US launch on May 7th. The film took $100.2 million in it first three days, which is an incredibly strong start and should have the suits over at Paramount smiling. Although the US normally gets films first, Paramount decided to take advatage of the May Day holiday that’s going on in many countries, and are also aware that the World Cup is coming in June. As a result the UK and many other countries got the much-anticipated sequel first.
Take a look below for the US box office top 10 for the weekend of April 30th-May 2nd.
Rank | Title | Weekend Gross (millions) | Total Gross to date (millions) |
1 | A Nightmare On Elm Street | $32.2 | $32.2 |
2 | How To Train Your Dragon | $10.8 | $192.3 |
3 | Date Night | $7.6 | $73..6 |
4 | The Back-Up Plan | $7.2 | $22.9 |
5 | Furry Vengeance | $6.5 | $6.5 |
6 | The Losers | $6.0 | $18.1 |
7 | Clash Of The Titans | $5.9 | $154.0 |
8 | Kick-Ass | $4.4 | $42.1 |
9 | Death At A Funeral | $4.0 | $34.7 |
10 | Oceans | $2.6 | $13.5 |