Ender’s Game Took the Biggest Shellacking at the Box Office This Weekend

, last week’s #1 movie and an adaptation of the perennial bestselling science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, tumbled more than 60% as all of last week’s movies took a beating from Thor‘s hammer…and reversed their previous positions.Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa, last week’s #2, held firm, keeping the #2 slot and drawing $11.3 million this week, but the third, fourth and fifth-rated films–all of which were new last week, whereas Bad Grandpa was a carryover–swapped spots so that last week’s #1 came in at #5 while last week’s #4 moved up to #3 and last week’s #3 moved down to #4.Confused yet? Here’s the side-by-side comparison:November 1-3Ender’s Game Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa Last Vegas Free Birds GravityNovember 8-10Thor: The Dark World Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa Free Birds Last Vegas Ender’s GameIf you’ll remember, we speculated last week that Free Birds might have some life left in it yet; the Thanksgiving-themed animated comedy is about the only thing in theaters right now that you can safely take your kids to, and on a fairly modest budget, we thought it could play out somewhat like this summer’s Planes, which never dominated the box office but did consistently make money in small increments until it was, by most estimates, a financial success for Disney. That, coupled with poor reviews for Last Vegas, likely helped it move up the line while Ender’s Game–which suffered from basically trying to nab the same target demographic as Thor, was bound to take a big hit–but ended up taking an even bigger one than expected, while other recent releases were able to hang onto a good chunk of their audience.With about a third of its budget made back in its first two weeks, the onus is probably now on international ticket sales to help determine whether Ender’s Game can rate a sequel. Box Office Mojo are predicting the film will end up with around $75 million domestically, which is better than distributor Lionsgate got out of Dredd last year but still not what you hope from a major franchise with a ton of hype, a number of big-name stars who get money out of the backend and a $115 million budget. They compare the film’s performance to The Golden Compass and Eragon, both young readers fantasy novels which failed to generate sequels.