A recent report published by Reuters shows that the comedy “21 Jump Street” was the leader of the weekend box office drawing large numbers of viewers since its premiere on March 16. The movie is a comic remake of a 1980s drama show which featured the first TV appearance of actor Johnny Depp.
Statistics registered from Friday to Sunday show that the majority of people who have chosen to go to the cinema this weekend have bought tickets to the new comic production, “21 Jump Street”. The movie pulled $35.0 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters, thus determining distributor Sony to order a sequel.
Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, the main actors of the film, interpret two bumbling young cops who are selected for a special mission. The two police officers have to go undercover as high school students to bust a drug ring, but they have hard times getting along with the younger generations.
The audience included mainly male viewers, whereas half of the film goers were under the age of 25 and the other half older than 25. Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Sony Pictures thinks the success of the movie is also due to the advance screenings and Internet marketing campaign that the distributing company has created for the film.
The second place of the weekend box office was occupied by the two-time winner, “The Lorax”. The movie presenting an orange creature which defends the trees won $22.8 million at North American theaters and $172.5 million around the globe since its debut three weeks ago.
The sci-fi epic “John Carter” was on the third place of the weekend charts because it only managed to gross $13.5 million in American theaters. However, foreign film goers showed more interest in the movie as the Disney production gathered $40.7 million from sales registered in overseas theaters. Despite this, producers are very disappointed with these figures because “John Carter” cost $250 million to produce.
On the fourth and the fifth places were the high school comedy “Project X” and Eddie Murphy’s “A Thousand Words”. The two productions pulled $4.0 million and $3.8 million, respectively.
