Via Box Office Mojo, The Numbers, and other sources:Animated family musical adventure "Rio" held its estimated #1 ranking when actual numbers were calculated from the Easter weekend box office. Grossing $26.3 million, "Rio" held off Tyler Perry's latest ensemble film, "Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family", which amassed $25.1 million to land in second place. "Rio" continued its incredible worldwide run where the film has banked $206 million overseas. Nearing $300 million in total gross after just 3 weeks is an impressive feat.
"...Madea..." was the 6th film to feature Tyler Perry as his cross-dressing grandmother character and continued the trend of Perry films not being screened for critics in advance of their release. At this point, the brand has been built and Perry's franchise now guarantees openings on par with this one. Perry's latest opened on more screens than any of his other films to date, appearing at 2,288 sites. All in all, this was the fourth best opening for a Perry-directed film and if history holds, "...Madea..." will have a decent second weekend and then likely drop substantially in its third weekend.
The romantic drama "Water For Elephants" was overestimated and came in at $16.8 million, which tempered excitement slightly. If "Water" can hold a good second weekend audience, the film could finish in the $50 million range for its total box office run; a vast improvement over Pattinson's "Remember Me" which earned a mere $19.1 million in the spring of 2010. For Reese Witherspoon, the film served as her biggest opening since the 2008 holiday comedy "Four Christmases" ($31.2 million to start) and matched her 2005 romantic dramedy, "Just Like Heaven", which started at $16.4 million.
DisneyNature's third straight Easter weekend release, "African Cats" landed in 6th place with a $6.0 million start, which with actual receipts counted was nearly identical to last year's opening frame for "Oceans". It is hard to tell if Disney is happy that this opening matched "Oceans", which seemed a disappointment last year when compared to "Earth"'s success in 2009. "African Cats" should fall just short of $20 million when it completes its overall run.
"Scream" is silenced, "Atlas..." does indeed shrug, "I Am" takes a stand and more analysis after the cut:
