‘The Butler’ serves up another winning weekend

NEW YORK – Lee Daniels’ The Butler served up a second helping at the box office, topping the weekend with $17 million according to studio estimates Sunday.

That was enough to lead all films on a late August weekend known as a dumping ground for studios following their summer blockbusters and before the start of the fall movie-going season. Daniels’ historical drama about a long-serving White House butler, starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, last weekend opened with $24.6 million.

Three new releases failed to catch on. The made-in-Toronto teen fantasy Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, adapted from the popular young adult book series, opened tepidly in third with $9.3 million on the weekend and $14 million since opening Wednesday. With franchise hopes, production of a sequel starts next month in Toronto, again starring Lily Collins as a New York teenager who discovers she has mystical powers.

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Edgar Wright’s pub-crawl-gone-wrong comedy The World’s End opened with $8.9 million. That was a better start for The World’s End, which stars Simon Pegg, than Wright’s last film with the actor: 2007’s Hot Fuzz. It opened with $5.8 million. Playing in 1,549 theatres, The World’s End did its business in less than half the theatres of The Butler or Mortal Instruments.

Despite good reviews, home-invasion horror flick You’re Next opened weakly with $7.1 million.

With a cumulative total of $52.3 million, The Butler is headed for a domestic haul of $100 million. It has followed the release pattern of another movie about race and domestic service: the 2011 drama The Help, also released in August.

In its third week of release, road trip comedy We’re the Millers, starring Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston, continued to thrive. It took in $13.5 million over the weekend, bringing its overall total to $91.7 million.

Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine became his widest release ever. It made $4.3 million over the weekend after earning more than $10 million in four weeks of limited release.

The 3-D release of Jurassic Park, which opened in North America in April, led the overseas market with $30 million over the weekend, most of that from its opening in China.