Weekend Box Office: 'Straight Outta Compton' Dominates; 'Man From U.N.C.L.E.' Is DOA

Yahoo Movies
Updated

Turns out that Straight Outta Compton did even better at the North American box office this weekend than Universal originally estimated.

While the studio predicted a weekend box office of $56.1 million on Sunday morning, on Monday it revised that number to a whopping $60.2 million.

The film opened to $24.1 million on Friday, including its Thursday night screenings; it corralled $19.3 million on Saturday and took in an extra $16.8 million on Sunday.

The film now stands as the fifth best August opening ever, narrowly surpassing M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, which opened to $60.1 million in 2002.

Universal’s R-rated Compton, the biopic about the groundbreaking hip-hop group N.W.A., produced for just $29 million, posted a best-ever opening for its director F. Gary Gray. It also overshadowed other rap movies like Eminem’s 8 Mile, which bowed to $51.2 million in 2002 and Notorious, the story of Notorious B.I.G., which opened to $20.5 million in 2009.

Co-financed by Universal and Legendary, the film stars O'Shea Jackson Jr. as his real-life father, Ice Cube, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, Aldis Hodge as MC Ren and Neil Brown Jr. as DJ Yella.

Opening in 2,751 theaters, it was produced by former N.W.A members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre (among others). Ice Cube, the producer, managed to beat his own best-opening as a lead actor, 2014’s Ride Along, which opened to $41.5 million.

Straight Outta Compton beat all expectations, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the weekend’s other new wide release, which pulled in a meager $13.5 million, in its dust.

Watch the 'Straight Outta Compton’ cast members talk about who they’d want to see in a sequel below:

The latest in a string of number one openings from Universal, the movie also boosted the studio’s 2015 domestic gross above the $2 billion mark in the shortest amount of time in a calendar year that any studio has ever hit that mark.

Warner Bros. PG-13-rated period spy tale The Man From U.N.C.L.E. didn’t strike much of a nostalgic chord among moviegoers as it was unveiled in 3,638 locations. The movie, which cost $80 million-plus to produce, arrived in third place, behind the more muscular spy outing Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation. Directed by Guy Ritchie, the film, from Warners and Davis Entertainment, stars Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer as a CIA agent and a KGB operative who work on a joint mission against a mysterious criminal organization.

Among the movies entering their second weekend, Fox's superhero reboot Fantastic Four dropped by a steep 69 percent, taking in $8 million to bring its cumulative purse to $41.9 million as it settled into the fourth place slot. In fifth place, STX's thriller The Gift had a better hold, dropping 45 per cent as it collected $6.5 million, bringing its take to $23.6 million. And in ninth place, Sony's Ricki and the Flash, starring Meryl Streep, held on with just a 31 percent drop as it attracted $4.6 million, bringing its cume to $14.7 million.

On the specialty front, Fox Searchlight launched Mistress America, Noah Baumbach's latest comedy starring Greta Gerwig, which took in $94,000 in four theaters, an encouraging $23,500-per-theater average.

Watch the ‘Straight Outta Compton’ cast talk about the hip-hop homework they did to prepare for the movie: