Friday night (July 25) saw a battle at the box office with the release of Scarlett Johansson's "Lucy" and Dwyane Johnson's "Hercules." Both films were released on the same night but Hercules' muscles were no match for the butt-kicking Lucy.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Johansson's film made $44 million from 3,173 theaters, while "Hercules" took second place with an estimated $29 million from 3,595 theaters. The film's opening weekend success was a career high for the 29-year-old actress as a lead and also the biggest opening for its director, Luc Besson.
EW reports that an equal amount of men and women flocked to the theaters to watch "Lucy," a drug mule who accidentally gets infected with a drug that enhances her brain abilities. 35 percent of the moviegoers were under the age of 25 and 29 percent were Hispanic.
In theaters playing Johnson's "Hercules," most of the audience members were male (58 percent) and 36 percent were 25-years-old or younger. However, even though "Lucy" beat "Hercules" during the first weekend it seems like most people were less than impressed with Johansson's film and gave it a C+ Cinema Score. The Rock's action-packed film received a B+ Cinema Score.
According to USA Today, "Hercules" had a budget of $100 million David Mumpower, analyst for Box Office Prophets thinks "there is still some question about whether the studio will get what it has paid for."
Rounding out the top five were "Dawn of the Planet of Apes" (which spent its first two weeks at No.1) with $16.4 million, "The Purge: Anarchy" with $9.9 million, and "Planes: Fire & Rescue" with $9.3 million. Diane Keaton and Michael Douglas' "And So It Goes" failed to make it into the top five, earning an estimated $4.55 million from 1,762 locations, EW reports.
