'The Purge' Startles, Cleans Out Box Office
The Purge frightened not only its audiences over the weekend but movie experts as well, as the horror-thriller film cleaned out the box office with a substantial opening of an estimated $36.4 million domestic.
The film, starring Training Day's Ethan Hawke and Game of Thrones' Lena Headey, flushed the comedy The Internship, which pulled in only $18.1 million despite high expectations for Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson's first film together since their successful 2005 comedy Wedding Crashers.
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The Internship was surpassed by both action film Fast & Furious 6 (2nd: $19.8 million, $203 million) and the magic thriller Now You See Me (3rd: $19.5 million, $61.4 million), which are in their third and second weeks of release, respectively.
As The Internship opened with meager numbers, major milestones were passed and encroached upon for other films this weekend.
After four weeks of release, Star Trek Into Darkness (6th: $11.7 million, $200.1 million) crossed the $200-million mark; The Hangover Part III (8th: $7.4 million, $102.4 million) entered the nine-digit club in its third week of release; and Iron Man 3 (9th: $5.8 million, $394.3) infringed upon a whopping $400 million domestic after six weeks.
With a nearly $1.2 billion worldwide gross total, Iron Man 3, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, is the fifth-highest grossing film of all time, still slotted behind Harry Potter and the Death Hallows: Part 2 ($1.34 billion, 2011).