Weekend Box Office: '42' Sets Record, 'Scary Movie 5' Bombs, 'Oblivion' Launches Overseas

Here's an odd statistic: Despite baseball being theoretically America's national past time and being the subject of any number of feature films over the decades, not a single baseball-themed film has ever opened at over $20 million.  Not until today that is, when the Jackie Robinson biopic 42 (review HERE) opened with a surprisingly robust $27.3 million.  Not only is that the biggest baseball opening weekend on record, it's the biggest baseball-themed opening weekend even when adjusted for inflation (in 2013 dollars, A League of Their Own has a debut of $26.6 million).  This is good news for the somewhat beleaguered Warner Bros, which has seen the disappointing returns for Bullet to the Head, Beautiful Creatures, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (all well under $25 million in domestic totals).  The film scored a rock-solid 3.0x weekend multiplier and a somewhat rare A+ score from the audience polling service CinemaScore.  The film played 52% male and 83% 25-and-older.  So yeah, the $38 million production is likely going to have long legs at least for the month of April with a trip over the $100 million mark a genuine possibility.

Review: 42 (2013)

Writer/director Brian Helgeland's 42 is an openly earnest and sentimental bit of old-school hokum.  It is the kind of studio programmer biopic that was once a standard issue release, and it is absolutely successful in its respective goals.  It doesn't aim to be an all-encompassing epic of race relations in the 1940's, nor does it even strive to use the Jackie Robinson story as a grand statement on the eventual Civil Rights movement to come, even as its characters are all-too-aware of the color barrier being broken.  It masks a certain subtly and nuance beyond sweeping music and sometimes obvious monologues.  Released in April instead of October or November, it is surely not intended to win Oscars but merely to tell an educational story to a generation for whom its significance may have lessened over the years.