Weekend Box Office Report

Riding a huge wave of strong reviews and even stronger buzz, 'Dawn of the Planet Apes' opened big for a non-superhero, non-Transformers movie, leading a top 10 that's full of just as many hits as misses. How about we just start at the top and work our way through?

Major holiday weekends are often huge for the box office, with millions of Americans taking advantage of their extra time off to head out to the movies. But this fourth of July weekend? Not so much. Despite three new releases, it was a surprisingly quiet time at the movies these past few days and it's hard to imagine anyone being particularly overjoyed with these numbers...

Everyone expected '22 Jump Street' and 'How to Train Your Dragon 2' to open well, but you won't find many people who expected the raunchy R-rated comedy to open bigger than the family friendly animated adventure. But here we are! Both films opened well, but '22 Jump Street,' like the first film, is has taken a hammer to all expectations.

This weekend saw a neck-and-neck race for the first spot at the box office, with the animated 'Rio 2' offering strong competition for last week's champion, 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier.' When the dust, debris and feathers settled, the one starring the superhero took the first slot, but there is no shame in a second place that strong.

Insert your own "when it rains, it pours" joke right here. Darren Aronofsky's instantly controversial biblical epic 'Noah' overcame mixed buzz to win the box office this weekend, catering to both religious audiences and film buffs who like weird movies from unique, picky directors. But all was not well for everyone -- the latest film from a certain Hollywood action legend got washed away

If the main goal of 'Divergent' was to snag a large portion of the audience for 'The Hunger Games,' it looks like it succeeded. Although it didn't reach the absurd heights of Katniss' two movies, Shailene Woodley's dystopian adventure effortlessly nabbed the number one spot and, unless something bad happens next week, announced the arrival of a new big franchise.

If the goal for 'Need For Speed' was to replicate the success of the 'Fast and Furious' films, then the film's opening weekend is not promising. Opening in third place, the video game adaptation was overtaken by two of last week's releases, making this potential franchise D.O.A.

When 'RoboCop' got pushed from an August 2013 release date to February 2014, everyone assumed it would open stronger when far away from the busy summer months. If this is the better of the two options, then we can't even imagine how poorly it would have opened in the warmer months. The remake of the 1987 classic is definitely not a disaster, but it most certainly underperformed.

Ah, a week at the box office where the new release flies completely under the radar and everything else feels like it's just hanging out because there's nothing else to push it off the charts. Welcome to January. Welcome to the home of movies like 'I Frankenstein,' which was dead on arrival this weekend and will vanish into dollar theaters within the next week or so.

Although you'd think people would spend the holidays in their homes catching up with their families and what-not, they actually tend to go to the movies after opening gifts and having awkward conversations. And Christmas Day moviegoers had a bunch of options this week, with recent releases (and not-so-recent releases) still going strong and a whole bunch of new releases arriving to coincide with t