The dranedy This Is Where I Leave You grabs enough patrons to take 3rd place.
Pamela McClintock of THR:
Proving that a boy-centric YA film adaptation can click, 20th Century Fox's The Maze Runner opened to a pleasing $32.5 million at the North American box office, more the double the $13.1 million debut of Liam Neeson's R-rated action offering A Walk Among the Tombstones.
Shawn Levy's new adult dramedy This Is Where I Leave You followed at No. 3 with $11.9 million.
Maze Runner, grabbing an A- CinemaScore, hopes to launch a new franchise for Fox, which spent $34 million to make the thriller. Dylan O'Brien (Teen Wolf) Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Kaya Scodelario and Will Poulter star in the movie.
The movie owes a big thanks to younger males, a demo that's become difficult to lure to the multiplex. Younger females, devotees of YA, also turned out in force, but their attendance was expected. Overall, females made up 52 percent of ticket buyers; males, 48 percent.
Maze Runner follows O'Brien's character as he wakes up with no memory inside the center of a giant maze, an area known as The Glade, surrounded by other teen boys who likewise can't remember anything. Threatening them all are vicious creatures known as Grievers. The boys look for a way out of the maze, but it isn't until a mysterious girl arrives that they have a fighting chance.
Wes Ball directed from an adapted script by Noah Oppenheim.
In terms of comparisons, dystopian YA film adaptation Ender's Game opened to $27 million in November 2011 after a $9.8 million Friday. Divergent, also a dystopian story but featuring a female heroine (Shailene Woodley), launched to $54.6 million in March 2014.
From Cross Creek Pictures, Walk Among Tombstones earned a B+ CinemaScore and came in behind expectations. It also came in well behind Neeson's other recent action films, including this year's Non-Stop, which debuted to $28.9 million. However, that film, like Neeson's Taken franchise or Unknown, were rated PG-13, versus an R for Tombstones (insiders also note Tombstones' darker tone).
The movie, costing a reported $23 million to make and playing in 2,712 locations, is based on Lawrence Block's best-selling mystery novels and stars Neeson as ex-New York City cop Matt Scudder, who now works as an unlicensed private investigator and is hired by a drug dealer to find the dealer's kidnapped wife.
Universal is distributing Tombstones in the U.S., while Entertainment One has Canada. Older males, as expected, are most interested in seeing the film, but their wives or girlfriends could have convinced them to see This Is Where I Leave You instead.
This Is Where I Leave You is a marked departure for Levy, who generally sticks to big commercial fare. The dramedy, playing in 2,868 theaters, cost $20 million to make but certainly doesn't lack star power, boasting a cast led by Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne and Jane Fonda. It earned a B+ CinemaScore.
From Warner Bros. and based on Jonathan Tropper's novel, This Is Where I Leave You follows four siblings who reunite at their family home to sit shiva for their father (Tropper wrote the adapted screenplay). The movie made its world premiere earlier this month at the Toronto Film Festival and is projected to open in the low to mid teens.
This Is Where I Leave You was up 28 percent on Saturday, reflecting a strong turnout among older adults (86 percent of the audience was over the age of 25).
Several other Toronto titles debuted this weekend, albeit in more limited runs, including Kevin Smith's Tusk, which A24 rolled out in roughly 600 theaters. The film fell outside the top 10, earning $886,144.
Next Up: Antoine Fuqua's big screen reboot of the 80's TV series "The Equalizer" seeks box office justice. In the movie, Denzel Washington's McCall is living a quiet life while working at a Home Depot, when one of his acts of kindness toward Teri a prostitute (Chloe Moretz) gets him snared with the Russian mob.
Meet The Boxtrolls, Based on the children's novel by Alan Snow called Here Be Monsters! In the stop-motion animated film--A young orphaned boy (voiced by Isaac Hempstead Wright) is raised by underground cave-dwelling trash collectors. He soon must try to save his friends from an evil exterminator.
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