‘The Croods’ catches fire with $44.7M opening

LOS ANGELES – The caveman comedy The Croods left an indelible mark on the wall, opening at No. 1 with $44.7 million, according to Sunday studio estimates.

The 3-D adventure features a voice cast including Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone and Canada’s Ryan Reynolds. They play a prehistoric family encountering danger and strange new creatures when they’re forced to find a new cave.

Opening strongly in second place with $30.5 million was Olympus Has Fallen, an action thriller from Training Day director Antoine Fuqua in which North Korean terrorists take over the White House. Gerard Butler, as a secret service agent, leads an all-star cast that includes Aaron Eckhart as the president, Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett.

This one-two punch of Croods and Olympus — two movies that appealed to two very different audiences — was much-needed at the box office, which is down 13 per cent from the same period last year, said Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com.

But this weekend’s haul is down 34 per cent from the same weekend a year ago, when the juggernaut of The Hunger Games debuted. It made a whopping $152.5 million in its opening, which is more than all the films in theatres combined will have made this weekend.

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Among the other new films this weekend, the Tina Fey-Paul Rudd college comedy Admission opened in fifth place with just $6.4 million. But the buzzed-about Spring Breakers, featuring Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens as hard-partying college girls, did well in its first nationwide expansion. It made $5 million on 1,104 screens for a total of $5.4 million over the past two weeks.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theatres, according to Hollywood.com. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “The Croods,” $44.7 million.

2. “Olympus Has Fallen,” $30.5 million.

3. “Oz the Great and Powerful,” $22 million.

4. “The Call,” $8.7 million.

5. “Admission,” $6.4 million.

6. “Spring Breakers,” $5 million

7. “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” $4.3 million.

8. “Jack the Giant Slayer,” $3 million.

9. “Identity Thief,” $2.5 million.

10. “Snitch,” $1.9 million.