“Warm Bodies”, a romantic comedy featuring a warm-hearted zombie with a conscience, lured more than just teenaged twihards to the theater this weekend. The new zombie flick collected $20 million in ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada to take the box office title on a weekend dominated by Super Bowl parties and football watching. The oddball pairing of a pale-faced zombie leading man with his live-breathing girlfriend faced little competition among new films and easily mangled last weekend's winner “Hansel and Gretel”, according to Review Seeker.
“Hansel and Gretel”, an updated version of the classic fairy tale with witch-hunting siblings took in $9.2 million this weekend, according to studio estimates. The weekend's other widely released action flick “Bullet to the Head”, starring 66 year-old Sylvester Stallone as a tattooed hit-man, brought in $4.5 million for sixth place.
Stallone shouldn’t feel too bad though, since two weeks ago his aging action star cohort Arnold Schwarzenegger had a pathetic opening in his latest offering “The Last Stand”.
Getting a boost from the Oscar nominations for each of its four stars, “Silver Linings Playbook” came in third with $8.1 million as it continued to spread to more theaters.
As reported by Entertainment Weekly, “Warm Bodies” was financed for about $35 million, so earning $20 million in its first three days out of the gate is a good thing. It may not be in the realm of “Twilight”, but no one really expected it to live up to that blockbuster reputation.
Yes both stories are about romances between a teenage girl and an undead boy, but the Isaac Marion novel upon which “Warm Bodies” is based never experienced the universality that the “Twilight” books did.
For 23 year-old rising star Nicholas Hoult, who has a number of high profile upcoming releases including “Jack the Giant Slayer”, “Mad Max: Fury Road”, and “X-Men: Days of Future Past”, “Warm Bodies” is a nice un-dead start to his run as a leading man.
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