Weekend box office: Pixels can’t beat Ant-Man

Brad Sturdivant July 26th, 2015

There was a time when you wouldn’t bet against Adam Sandler at the weekend box office. But after a series of terrible and poor performing films, his movies are now more of something we all just have to put up with. But his latest effort, PIXELS, actually did pretty well compared to his low standards, hauling in over $20 million. And as much as we all complain about his movies, the fact is that critics love to hate his films, as evidenced by the numerous editorials complaining about Sandler every time he has a new movie. We also saw the release of Jake Gyllenhaal’s SOUTHPAW (click the link to read our review). The general consensus is that Jake is great, but the movie lacks, which will probably hurt his Oscar chances. But the film did manage to snag more than $16 million. The last new movie of the weekend was the teen romance drama PAPER TOWNS, which almost beat SOUTHPAW. So that was a pretty good haul for a movie with no A-listers and a limited marketing campaign.

Next week should be a big weekend and it should belong to MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION. It seems critics love this installment almost as much as they loved the fourth one, so we should be in for quite a treat. And besides, who doesn’t love seeing Tom Cruise do death-defying stunts? But it will have some competition in the form of VACATION. Warner Bros. has a lot of faith in the Ed Helms and Christina Applegate starring reboot, but I don’t think it will be able to take the top slot away from MI5. Note: the numbers below will be updated as they become final.

1. Ant-Man $26.1m

2. Pixels $23.8m

3. Minions $21.6m

4. Trainwreck $17m

5. Southpaw $16.5m

6. Paper Towns $15.7m

7. Inside Out $7.6m

8. Jurassic World $7m

9. Mr. Holmes $2.8m

10. Terminator: Genisys $2.1m

(Deadline)