Maze Runner Tops Healthy Week at the Box Office

While this weekend's box office hardly matched summer blockbuster-type numbers, the $30 million-plus opening of The Maze Runner teamed with a number of $10 million-plus films to form one of the better weeks in a while and a pretty respectable draw overall.

Even Guardians of the Galaxy, which slipped to the #6 spot this week but did so with only a $2.5 million drop week to week in spite of a spate of new movies coming in. In so doing, it passed Iron Man 2 on Marvel's all-time list and is within striking distance of beating out Iron Man for the best-ever franchise-starter this time next week or so (it's pacing well ahead of what Iron Man made at this point in its run).

The Maze Runner managed to draw $32.5 million, one of the ten-best September openings of all time and just barely outside of the top five. That was enough to give it the #1 spot for the weekend, and it made even more than that (about $38 million more) internationally, for a global take of over $80 million on a $34 million budget. The sequel has already been greenlit.

The film also outperformed both The Hunger Games and Divergent in a number of smaller foreign markets, including Korea and Russia.

In other international news, by the way, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes opened to a disappointing $3.7 million in Japan but passed the $100 million mark in China. The film will likely close out its theatrical run soon with about $700 million.

Back in the U.S., Maze Runner did dominate, but three other movies topped $10 million, which hasn't happened in a few weeks. A Walk Among the Tombstones came in at #2 with a disappointing $13 million, while Warner Bros.' This Is Where I Leave You made $11.7 million and Sony's No Good Deed brought in $10.1 million.

Dolphin Tale 2, last week's #2 film, fell 43.3% to $8.8 million. That wouldn't be a bad second week fall, except that the first Dolphin Tale fell less than 30% week to week and so this one, inevitably being compared to the predecessor, looks pretty bad.