Box Office: 'Lee Daniels The Butler' Holds Strong; 'The Mortal Instruments' Bombs

1. Lee Daniels' The Butler- $17M/$52.2M
A lack of strong competition helped keep Lee Daniels' The Butler going strong in the top spot, only slipping 30% from last week. In a few days it will likely become the director's highest-grossing film, and that's before the inevitable prestige push it will get when Oscar time comes around.
2. We're the Millers- $13.5/$91.7M
3. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones- $9.3M/$14M
Add another failed YA adaptation onto the growing pile. Sony did their best to make TMI: COB seem like it was on the same level as Twilight as The Hunger Games, but the novels simply weren't a phenomenon on that scale. And now we see that you can't simply take any of these books and take them to the screen with success, as the five-day total puts in the same ballpark as Beautiful Creatures and The Host. The Host was dreadful but Beautiful Creatures was actually pretty good, and went on to do reasonably well overseas. Sony is going to have to hope their film can do the same if they plan to move forward with the already-planned prequels and sequels.
4. The World's End- $8.9M
Technically this is a small-scale release with only 1500 theaters housing the final leg of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright's "Cornetto Trilogy", so this is a decent start considering. Neither Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz did much domestically, with the latter topping out at $23M, so this puts The World's End on a solid pace to become the highest-domestic grosser of the three. It's to their credit that in roughly half the number of theaters they very nearly surpassed 'The Mortal Instruments'.
5. Planes- $8.5M/$59.5M
6. Elysium- $7.1M/$69M
Plus another $70M overseas for a solid $139M worldwide.
7. You're Next- $7M
Long-delayed horror and festival darling You're Next failed to measure up to other genre films we've seen this year, The Conjuring and The Purge. Perhaps it has to do with a weak marketing push that tried to be too secretive about what the film entailed, making it look like a conventional home invasion thriller. While critics have been extremely gung-ho about it, the B- Cinemascore suggests audiences felt differently, so it's doubtful to receive a second week bounce and may have to settle for being a cult hit on DVD.
8. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters- $5.2M/$48.3M
May surpass $100M worldwide but for all intents and purposes this is the end of the Percy Jackson franchise.
9. Blue Jasmine- $4.3M/$14.7M
Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine expanded to over 1280 theaters this week, making it the biggest release of the director's storied career. As Cate Blanchett continues to be talked about as a potential Best Actress nominee, expect the film to be sticking around for a long time.
10. Kick-Ass 2- $4.2M/$22.4M
Hey, remember Kick-Ass 2? Only in its second week and it already feels like an afterthought, doesn't it? Obviously this was a misguided disaster all around, one that won't even be saved by middling foreign grosses amounting to only $16M. This certainly won't hurt anybody involved as they've all moved on to bigger things. Chloe Moretz has Carrie and a number of other projects, Aaron Johnson is circling The Avengers 2, and even writer/director Jeff Wadlow has a potential X-Force film in the works.