"The Butler" Stays Atop the Weekend Box Office
Quite literally, the box office veered in one direction this past holiday weekend. The white-hot British boy band One Directon had the most successful movie debut over the four-day period with the documentary One Direction: This Is Us, raking in $18 million in ticket sales, according to Box Office Mojo. It couldn't, however, beat a film now in its third week of release. Lee Daniels' The Butler was the top cinema offering in the country over that stretch of time, taking in just over $20 million. That brings its tally so far to $79.3 million, which is more than double its estimated $30 million production budget.
Sony unit TriStar distributes One Direction: This Is Us. The Butler is distributed by the privately held Weinstein Company.
Nos. 3 and 4 belonged to two other veterans, the road-trip comedy We're the Millers and Disney's animated aeronautical saga Planes. Box Office Mojo figures pegged the four-day extended weekend grosses of the two at $15.9 million and $10.7, respectively. That means We're the Millers has taken in nearly $113 million so far in its run, while Planes has pocketed $73.8 million. Both numbers are well above the estimated production budgets of those films.
Rounding out the top five was a newcomer, Instructions Not Included. The film is notable for being a rare non-English-language film to make a strong debut in the U.S. market. Box Office Mojo said that the dramedy, directed and co-written by its star, Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez, reaped $10 million over the extended weekend.
We're the Millers is distributed by Time Warner unit Warner Bros., while Instructions Not Included comes under the umbrella of Lions Gate Entertainment .
The article "The Butler" Stays Atop the Weekend Box Office originally appeared on Fool.com.
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