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 "Ride Along" collected $12.3 million in ticket sales over
what was a slow Super Bowl weekend at many domestic movie
theaters. The film has collected $93 million since its January
17 release.
Second place went to the long-running Disney hit, "Frozen,"
which earned $9.3 million and benefited from newly added
"sing-along" shows, pushing its total since opening in late
November to more than $360 million, according to box office
tracking firm Rentrak.
"That Awkward Moment" was third with $9 million in ticket sales
at U.S. and Canadian theaters from Friday through Sunday. The
film stars Zac Efron as one of three friends who pledge to stay
single.
On the Super Bowl weekend, moviegoers spent about $85 million in
the domestic market, which includes theaters in the United
States and Canada. Last week's box office take was $118 million,
according to Rentrak.
Marketed heavily to women who might be less inclined to watch
the Super Bowl, "That Awkward Moment," which received generally
lackluster reviews, fell short of the industry's $12 million
forecast. Only 22 of 99 reviewers gave it a "fresh," or
positive, rating, according to the website Rotten Tomatoes. Of
moviegoers who saw the film, 58 percent said they liked it,
according to the site.
Focus Features, the studio that released the low-budget $8
million film, said it was "designed as counter programming with
a target audience of female movie-goers," noting that it "scored
best with our primary audience of younger females."
"Labor Day," the other new release this weekend, collected
$5.3 million in ticket sales to open in the No. 7 slot, and fell
short of industry expectations of about $8 million.
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 The film stars Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet in an
adaption from Joyce Maynard's novel of the same name about an
escaped convict who takes refuge in the home of a depressed single
mother.
Paramount Pictures, the Viacom-owned unit that distributed the film,
promoted the film in conjunction with the American Pie Council. The
January 23 National Pie Day was promoted through posters distributed
to pie shops and bakeries that showed the two stars making a pie.
Paramount said the film also skewed female, with
females making up 59 percent of the audience.
Rounding out the top five, the animated film "The Nut Job" was took
fourth with sales of $7.6 million, while Mark Wahlberg's Afghanistan
war film "Lone Survivor" was fifth with $7.2 million.
"The Awkward Moment" was distributed by Focus Features, a unit of
Comcast's NBC Universal. "Ride Along" and "Lone Survivor" were
distributed by Universal Pictures, a unit of NBC Universal. "Labor
Day" was distributed by Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom.
Walt Disney distributed "Frozen." "The Nut Job," was distributed by
Open Road Films, a joint venture of AMC Entertainment and Regal
Entertainment.
(Reporting by Ronald Grover and Chris
Michaud; editing by Meredith Mazzilli)
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