Nonsense sells
Bang in the middle of awards season comes a Boratesque, semi-scripted, reality mish-mash to knock Gravity off its orbit for the first time in a month. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, Paramount Pictures' irreverent twist on the counter-programmer, offers audiences something different during the annual buffet of awards hopefuls.
Arch prankster Johnny Knoxville gets made up to resemble a senior citizen and proceeds to get into all manner of mischief. All good fun if you like this kind of thing. The movie opened on an estimated $32m (£19.8m) and drove the top 12 to a 15% gain on the same period last year.
Nonsense doesn't sell
At least Bad Grandpa knows what it is and doesn't take itself seriously. Ridley Scott's The Counselor is an altogether different strain of piffle and arrived in fourth place on $8m (£4.9m). Fox only allowed critics to watch Scott's crime drama a few days before it opened and we all know what that means. The wolves wasted no time eviscerating the flimsy pretension of Cormac McCarthy's confused first original screenplay, set against the charmless milieu of Mexican drug cartels and bogged down by murky characters and even murkier dialogue. The starry ensemble – Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz – look bored throughout, however there is a glimmer of hope. Diaz's balletic windshield hump might just elevate The Counselor into so-bad-it's-good territory and render it eligible for a Razzie.
12 Years a Slave rolls up its sleeves
On the subject of awards, we never miss the cacophonous signature of an Oscar march: a movie premieres amid great fanfare at Telluride, Toronto or Venice (or any combo thereof), emblazons itself across the trade press homepages with a mighty platform release and then smashes into the top 10. And so it begins for 12 Years a Slave, as Gandalf might say were he an Oscar pundit. Steve McQueen's horrendously good movie arrived last week in four theatres and expanded into 123 over the second weekend, grossing $2.2m for $3.4m (£2.1m). Can ace distributor Fox Searchlight maintain audience interest in the weeks to come? Awards voters are engaged, that's for sure. 12 Years a Slave is going to be a heavyweight all the way to Oscar night.
Gravity heads for $500m worldwide
Four weekends in and Warner Bros's modest little drama about astronaut survival is still careening through the box-office firmament like a meteor shower, smashing through everything in its path except Bad Grandpa. The movie may have been shunted down to No 2 in the North American charts, but it remains the No 1 attraction at the international box office and has clocked up more than $364m (£225m) worldwide. With quite a bit of mileage left in North America and upcoming launches in the UK, China and Japan, Gravity is a dead cert to cross the half-billion-dollar mark before long.
Where is All Is Lost?
Robert Redford not saying much as an enigmatic outdoorsman in a stricken boat sounds like a 1970s American indie wet dream, and that is probably what writer-director JC Chandor had in mind. So how is All Is Lost doing in its second weekend? Not bad at all. This is one potential awards contender that likes to maintain a low profile – for now. Roadside Attractions expanded the survival drama from six to 81 sites as the film climbed 20 places to No 18 on $518,000 for $656,000. We'll be sure to keep an eye on it in the weeks ahead.
North American top 10, 25-27 October 2013
1. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, $32m
2. Gravity, $20.3m. Total: $199.8m
3. Captain Phillips, $11.8m. Total: $70.1m
4. The Counselor, $8m
5. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, $6.1m. Total: $100.6m
6. Carrie, $5.9m. Total: $26m
7. Escape Plan, $4.3m. Total: $17.4m
8. 12 Years a Slave, $2.2m. Total: $3.4m
9. Enough Said, $1.6m. Total: $13m
10. Prisoners, $1.1m. Total: $59.1m
More from the US box office
• Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa - review
• More US box office analysis
