REUTERS
LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK -Buddy cop comedy “Ride Along, starring Kevin Hart and Ice Cube, cruised to a third straight weekend at the top of the box office charts, outearning new release “That Awkward Moment.”
“Ride Along” collected $12.3 million (£7.5 million) in ticket sales over what was a slow Super Bowl weekend at many domestic movie theatres. 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 theatres 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 theatres 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.”