The Perfect Guy Beats The Visit At Box OfficePosted by Wilson Morales
September 14, 2015
The official results are now in and as expected, the thriller “The Perfect Guy,” starring fan favorites Sanaa Lathan, Morris Chestnut and Michael Ealy, has edged out M. Night Shyamalan’s horror film “The Visit” for first place at the weekend box office, taking in $26.7M to $25.9M.
With this feat, it’s the first time that films with African American actors in lead roles have taken over the box office for five consecutive weeks, and the first time where it’s three different films in 3 consecutive weeks, after “War Room” and “Straight Outta Compton.”
What’s interesting is that with Straight Outta Compton, War Room, and Perfect Guy, all of its earlier predictions were way off the mark. Universal tried to play it safe by stating that they expected Compton to do about $40M its opening weekend and it did $60M. It’s now at $155M and in a week or so, will be the highest grossing film by a black director domestically.
With War Room, this faith-based film shocked folks when, despite negative review from critics, it stopped Compton from taking in a fourth straight weekend last week and has a total grossed of nearly $40M after two weeks.
As for The Perfect Guy, experts has predicted it would make under $20M, but they failed to do their research and notice that its distributor Screen Gems has a good track record at overperforming with its African American films around this time. Just last year, “No Good Deed,” another thriller with Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson, debuted to $24.2 million. What’s interesting is that film sat on the shelf for a couple of years. Back in 2010, they released “Takers” in August when it was predicted to make $10M. It opened #1 with $20M.
Although it came in second place, it’s still a comeback for writer-director M. Night Shyamalan to have a film that audience came out to see. Along with this film, and the TV series Wayward Pines, which played well over the summer on Fox, he’s starting to get out director’s hell that has plagued him for years. Not since his breakout hit “The Sixth Sense” has he had a critical hit. Other film he’s done have made money, but were not up to par. “M. Night Shyamalan is back,” said Nicholas Carpou, head of domestic distribution at Universal. “This was a great collaboration. There was a lot of goodwill out there for a master storyteller working in this genre.”
According to Variety, “The Perfect Guy’s” opening weekend crowd was 70% female, 41% under the age of 25, 61% African-American, 20% Caucasian and 13% Hispanic. “The Visit” brought in a group that was 48% under the age of 21, 60% female, 39% Caucasian, 39% Hispanic and 10% African-American.
1. The Perfect Guy – $26.7M
2. The Visit – $25.9M
3. War Room– $7.4M
4. A Walk In The Woods– $4.6M
5. Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation – $4.1M
6. Straight Outta Compton – $4.09M
7. No Escape – $2.8M
8. The Transporter Refueled – $2.7M
9. 90 Minutes In Heaven – $2.1M
10. Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos – $1.9M
