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WEEKEND BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN: JULY 18-20, 2014

~Matt Reed

All things being equal in a summer that has seen $90 mil debuts coupled with huge declines in the second week, DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES held well. It lost half it’s audience but was able to stay atop the box office chart by earning an estimated $36 mil. To date the film has earned an impressive $138.9 mil after 10 days.

THE PURGE: ANARCHY had one of the strongest openings for a horror film this year despite the fact that it was off roughly $6 mil from the original’s opening in 2013. It pulled in $28.3 mil against a slim $9 mil budget and had the highest per screen average of any film in the top ten.

PLANES: FIRE AND RESCUE, also a sequel to a film released last year, came in third pulling in an estimated $18 mil. That’s off $4 mil from the original film’s opening. With a $50 mil budget, small by animated standards, and for a franchise that was originally intended to be direct to video it’s not a bad opening. That said, this year has been especially tough on animated family films. Both MR. PEABODY & SHERMAN and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 have disappointed on the domestic front with only THE LEGO MOVIE being the breakout hit.

Coming in a distant fourth SEX TAPE failed to connect. It’s disappointing $15 mil opening is nearly $10 mil less that Cameron Diaz’s last film THE OTHER WOMAN and over $16 mil less than BAD TEACHER (2011) the last film pairing of Diaz and Jason Segel with director Jake Kasdan.  It’s gotten dismal reviews and will fade from the top ten in short order.

The only other news to report is that TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION is closing in on $900 mil worldwide. Despite it being the worst revenue producing film of the franchise on the domestic front, it will most assuredly cross $1 billion worldwide.

Up Next: Another three films vie for the slim 2014 summer dollar: the Rob Reiner comedy AND SO IT GOES starring Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton, another bite at the legend that is HERCULES starring The Rock and the latest from Luc Besson, the action film LUCY starring Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman.

Here, as always, are the weekend domestic estimates courtesy of our friends at boxofficemojo.com:

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