Elysium Set to Take #1 – And Draw Comparisons to Pacific Rim

Overall moviegoing is up significantly over the same weekend last year, as four different movies opened with between $15 and $35 million.Elysium, the Matt Damon/Jodie Foster space adventure film, is expected to take the #1 spot for the weekend with $30.5 million, while the Jennifer Aniston comedy We’re The Millers takes #2 with $25.7 million. Disney’s Planes, a spinoff of the Disney/Pixar Cars franchise, made $21 million while its sequel, Planes: Fire & Rescue, was being teased at D23 and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters rounded out the new releases with a $14 million weekend.Both Jackson and Millers got early starts on Wednesday, meaning that by the time the weekend was over We’re the Millers had generated just over $37 million and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters had just shy of $23 million in the bank.Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief opened at #3 back in 2010, and while it only made back $88 million of its $95 million budget, the perceived value of the franchise and close to $140 million in international ticket sales were enough to merit a second film, at a slightly reduced budget. That film opened at $31 million domestically and was an adaptation of the first installment of the Percy Jackson young adult novels–currently there are eight books in the series. Whether we’ll see more films will likely again hinge on the international market.