Box Office: 'Kingsman' Scores $42M Weekend, 'American Sniper' Tops $300M

This is all of the weekend  box office news not related to Fifty Shades of Grey. That stand-alone report can be found HERE.

It is to 20th Century Fox's credit that Kingsman: The Secret Service weathered the Fifty Shades media storm and avoided the Kick-Ass Curse. The "Colin Firth trains Taron Egerton to be a secret agent" action comedy earned a terrific $42 million Fri-Mon opening weekend is great even when you account for the fact that Monday is a holiday. The Matthew Vaughn adventure, something of an ultra-violent homage to the Roger Moore 007 films, featured an against-type Colin Firth and a "having far more fun than usual" Samuel L. Jackson and has been playing and selling very well to the geek crowd. It played 57% male, 60% 25and-over, 54%  Caucasian, 20% African-American, 14% Hispanic, and 12% Asian or "other."

I had feared that the film might suffer the fate of Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass (and to an even worse extent Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Dredd) by getting the online nerd crowd on board but earning a shrug from general moviegoers, so again kudos to Fox for not letting that happen. This isn't just a geek cult favorite but a mainstream hit. Two unapologetic R-rated genre entries both scoring huge on the same weekend is a huge win for those who want movies for and by adults in the multiplexes. They screened this one early-and-often to build word-of-mouth and had the key advantage of having a really strong 2014 line-up (including X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and Gone Girl) on which to play the crowd-pleasing (but shamefully spoiler-filled) trailers to like-minded audience members.

The $81 million film has been out in the UK for a couple weeks and it has now earned $85.8m worldwide. It is Colin Firth's biggest debut ever and director Matthew Vaughn's second biggest opening weekend behind the $55m haul of X-Men: First Class.  This is a solid debut for a pretty crowd pleasing film that could have really been a geeks-only affair, so I do expect we'll see a sequel in a few years. It will be Samuel L. Jackson's 17th (!) $30m+ debut, and you you all go on pretending that we didn't all race to see films like Jurassic Park solely because Sam Jackson had a glorified cameo, because I know at least one 13-year old film nerd who was all about "that guy in National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1" back in the day. I cannot imagine that Sam Jackson isn't or hasn't already finagled cameos in Jurassic World and The Force Awakens so as to continue his dominance as box office champion of the world.

In limited release news, the Anna Kendrick musical The Last Five Years earned $45,107 on three theaters. Of course, it's also available on VOD right now. Also debuting is the much-buzzed-about "vampire documentary" What We Do In the Shadows, which opened with $65,380 on three screens. I don't have weekend numbers for Spike Lee's Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus (it earned just $1,750 on eight screens on Friday), but I will update if anything comes in.

In holdover news,The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (Paramount/ Viacom Inc.) earned $40 million over the holiday, bringing it a new domestic cume of $103m. It passed the $85m domestic total of The SpongeBob Square Pants Movie on Sunday so expect a third film in the epic saga within a few years, one that brings everything full circle and changes what you thought you knew about the SpongeBob universe! American Sniper (Warner Bros./ Time Warner Inc.) earned another $19m over the weekend to cross the $300m mark and bring its cume to $307m. Project Almanac earned $2.7 million over its third weekend and $3.2m over the holiday to cross the $20m mark.

In less pleasant Warner Bros. news, Jupiter Ascending descended 49% on its second weekend, earning just $9.4m over the weekend and $10.6m over the holiday and bringing its cume to $33.8m. The $175m Wachowski sci-fi epic jumped 132% over Valentine's Day which would be impressive if the overall numbers were bigger. Paddington continued to hold strong, earning $4.1m Fri-Sun (-21%) and $5.3m for the Fri-Mon haul and new $63.5m domestic cume. Universal/ Comcast Corp. may not care as much any more, but Seventh Son dropped earned $4.2m for the weekend and $4.7m for holiday for a sad $14m eleven-day cume, although the film has earned $98.2m worldwide. The Imitation Game earned $3.545m over the Fri-Sun weekend (-24%) and $4m over the Fri-Mon holiday despite losing 412 theaters for a new total of $80.2m domestic.

Kevin Hart's The Wedding Ringer earned $3.4m (-27%) while losing 682 theaters to set the stage for a $3.7m holiday haul and a $60m domestic cume. Jennifer Lopez's The Boy Next Door earned $2.1m over the holiday to bring its cume to $34.1m. Kevin Costner's Black or White dropped 53% on its third weekend and earned around $605k for a likely $2.69m Fri-Mon hail and $17.4m 18-day total. I think the prospects for McFarland, USA look a lot better next week. Mortdecai earned $30,000 over the holiday on 382 screens, bringing its total to $7.689m. I appreciate that Lions Gate Entertainment is still reporting the numbers, but frankly I feel like a bully for including them. On the plus side, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part I has earned $395k over the holiday and brought its total to $336.22m. In other down the radar news, Whiplash has finally crossed $10m as of Monday. So go check out that out before the Oscars. I'm pretty sure it will be just your tempo.

That's it for today. Join me next weekend for the debuts of Kevin Costner's McFarland, USA, The Duff, and Hot Tub Time Machine 2.  In the meantime, enjoy this Rentrak top-ten list...