Weekend Box Office: “Ted” reigns supreme

With $54.1 million in box office receipts, Seth MacFarlane’s R-rated teddy bear comedy, “Ted,” won the weekend by a wide margin. Clearly, far more than MacFarlane’s “Family Guy” following showed up, as the movie coasted to the biggest opening for an R-rated comedy ever. If “Ted” manages to have the legs of past summer comedies like “Wedding Crashers” and “Horrible Bosses,” it could easily top $150m total box office, with an outside shot at $200m.

Speaking of legs… Despite over-performing to a whopping $19.4m on opening Friday, Steven Soderbergh’s “Magic Mike” fell precipitously on Saturday and Sunday for a weekend total of $39.2m. That’s still fantastic for a movie that cost somewhere between $5-7m to make, but it’s not the crazy-high figure that many expected after seeing Friday’s take. The drop is somewhat auspicious, given that the CinemaScore was a “B,” indicating that while the marketing may have pulled a bait-and-switch, audiences were still generally happy with what they saw. Still, if this weekend estimate holds up as the actual, then “Magic Mike” will go down as Soderbergh’s biggest opening ever  — even bigger than the “Oceans” films. Not too shabby for what is essentially an indie about male stripping.

As for the two other openers… “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection” fell very much within the filmmaker’s range at $26.4m, besting last year’s “Madea’s Big Happy Family” (which opened to $25.1m). And Alex Kurtzman’s passion project “People Like Us” did more crashing and burning than one of his “Transformers” films, pulling in just $4.3m. It was beaten by indie holdover “Moonrise Kingdom,” which grossed a remarkably solid $4.9m in an expansion to 854 theaters. Things are looking great for the Wes Anderson charmer — could it give “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” a run for its money in becoming the biggest “small movie” of the summer?

Here is the full top 10 chart for your perusal:

Source: Box Office Mojo