Box-office roundup – June 23, 2013 – "Monsters University" takes "World War Z" to school

1. Monsters University – $82 million [debut week] Pixar’s streak of consecutive films opening atop the box office now reaches 14 and this prequel is Pixar’s second highest opening trailing “Toy Story 3‘s” $110 million.

This has some high profile competition with Despicable Me 2 and Turbo, but this should be the year’s highest grossing animated film and may encourage Pixar to revisit this franchise for a third time.

2. World War Z – $66 million [debut week] Box office experts seriously underestimated Brad Pitt’s appeal and audience’s insatiable appetite for more and more zombie-focused films.

And despite the script rewrites and the third act re-shoot, audiences really just cared about seeing Brad Pitt tangle with zombies.

3. Man of Steel – $41.3 million [2nd week; $210 million] Last week’s winner had a significant drop, but that tends to happen when you set an all-time June opening weekend record.

This third place doesn’t speak to poor word-of-mouth for “MOS,” just that June is the heart of the summer movie season and each week is another potential mega blockbuster arriving in theaters.

The most important lesson for Warner Bros. Pictures here is that the early comic book summer blockbuster gets the biggest audience as Marvel Studios quickly grasped in positioning Marvel’s The Avengers and Iron Man 3 for May releases well ahead of the competition. release Worldwide it’s already reached $345 million!

4. This is the End – $13 million [2nd week; $57 million] Seth Rogen’s ensemble comedy fell off as well, but it’s just making a profit at this point so Rogen and the gang are cracking audiences up and laughing all the way to the bank.

With its solid start, it’ll be interesting if End will catch Rogen and co-stars James Franco and Danny McBride’s previous collaboration, Pineapple Express, which finished its run with $87 million, but this won’t come close to the $148 million of Rogen’s top-grossing film – the Judd Apatow-directed Knocked Up.

5. Now You See Me – $7.6 million [4th week; $94 million] The magic heist thriller is showing surprising longevity in a crowded summer release schedule and $100 million is nearly in reach at this point.