‘Resident Evil’ Delivers Box Office ‘Retribution’

Scott Harris September 16, 2012

Hollywood is breathing a small sigh of relief today, as Milla Jovovich and “Resident Evil: Retribution” helped avert another box office apocalypse this weekend.

Bringing in a very respectable $21.1 million in its opening weekend, “Resident Evil: Retribution” teamed up with the Disney/Pixar animated re-release “Finding Nemo 3D” ($17.5 million) to resuscitate the box office after two straight weeks of dismal performances. Last weekend’s top film, “The Possession,” didn’t even manage to break the $10 million mark.

Of course, it wasn’t all good news for Hollywood. As nice as the numbers were for “Resident Evil: Retribution,” the fifth installment of Jovovich and husband Paul W.S. Anderson’s long-running sci-fi franchise still came up short of the debut of their previous effort, “Resident Evil: Afterlife,” which brought in nearly $27 million over the same weekend in 2010. And “Finding Nemo 3D” fell well short of the $30.1 million “The Lion King” earned in its 3D re-release last September.

All told, then, while this week was a big improvement from last week, the box office was still down a full 15% from last year. There was at least one bright spot, however: Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” smashed arthouse records by taking in over $730k from just five theaters, for a record $146k per screen.

Looks like it was a good week to be named Paul Anderson.

Here are the estimated totals for the top ten over the three-day weekend, courtesy of Box Office Mojo:

1. “Resident Evil” Retribution – $21.1m (our review)
2. “Finding Nemo 3D” – $17.5m
3. “The Possession” – $5.8m (our review)
4. “Lawless” – $4.2m (our review)
5. “ParaNorman” – $3m (our review)
6. “The Expendables 2″ – $3.2m (our review)
7. “The Words” – $2.8m (our review)
8. “The Bourne Legacy” – $2.8m (our review)
9. “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” – $2.5m (our review)
10. “The Campaign” – $2.4m (our review)