MAR 21-23 BOX OFFICE REPORT: AUDIENCES DIVULGE IN DIVERGENT

After a slew of gargantuan YA flops at the box office over the past year, Veronica Roth's popular novel Divergent provided the genre with its third genuine success story, after the Twilight and ongoing The Hunger Games franchises. Divergent easily beat out all other competition for the top spot, with its $54.6 million over three times as much as closest rival Muppets Most Wanted. It was a disappointing start for the Muppets sequel, with just $17 over the three-day frame, thus continuing in its predecessor's habit of posting befuddling box office figures. The biggest achievement among new wide releases was God's Not Dead: $9.2 million in 780 theatres making for a per-theatre average of almost $12,000, and a fourth placing that ranks first all-time for a faith-based film opening in fewer than 1,000 theatres. Holdovers all experienced moderate-to-significant declines on last weekend, save The Grand Budapest Hotel, which made another expansion and posted another strong result: $6.8 million in 304 theatres for seventh place overall, and the weekend's highest per-theatre average for the third consecutive frame. That's a better PTA than limited openers such as Nymphomaniac: Volume I and Blood Ties, both of which had received VOD releases though (in Nymphomaniac's case, a few weeks back), and also better than documentaries Jodorowsky's Dune and Cannes-winning, Oscar-nominated and pretty fucking brilliant The Missing Picture - cineastes across North American ought to be ashamed of themselves for its paltry $10,148 gross.

Top 10

1. Divergent ($54,607,747)
2. Muppets Most Wanted ($17,005,126)
3. Mr. Peabody & Sherman ($11,832,558)
4. God's Not Dead ($9,244,641)
5. 300: Rise of an Empire ($8,504,075)
6. Need for Speed ($7,941,631)
7. The Grand Budapest Hotel ($6,787,955)
8. Non-Stop ($6,434,825)
9. The LEGO Movie ($4,149,244)
10. The Single Moms Club ($3,103,057)