"Lee Daniels' The Butler" Crushing Competition in the Weekend Box Office

Thanks to Oprah!

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In addition to garnering great reviews upon its release, Lee Daniels' The Butler is absolutely crushing competition in the box office this weekend. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film earned a total of $8.3 million on just Friday, and, with an 'A' cinemascore, is poised to rake in over $24 million over the entire weekend. That's huge for this film, especially considering it's the same weekend that Kick-Ass 2 and Jobs hit theaters as well.

The Butler's success, insiders theorize, may actually be due to the biggest star in the star-studded cast that Daniels put together: As Deadline reports, since The Butler marks Oprah Winfrey's first film role in over 15 years, most people buying presale tickets on Fandango indicated that her presence in the movie was the reason that they were inclined to see it. The massive amount of time she's spent promoting the film recently didn't hurt either.

As for the other films released this weekend—Kick-Ass 2 will very likely be falling short of its predecessor this weekend, as its predicted to earn about $15 million in the box office, and only pulled in $5.8 million on Friday. For some context: The first film, released in 2010, debuted to nearly $40 million.

Jobs, which had a budget of $15 million, earned about $2.6 million on Friday for a projectd $8 million weekend. Even worse, though: Paranoia only earned $1.3 million on Friday and is projected to pull in a total of $4 million this weekend, well short of its $35 million budget. Not to rub salt in the wound, but those numbers wouldn't even make it debut in the top ten this weekend. Yikes.

What do you plan on seeing this weekend?

[via The Hollywood Reporter]

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