The best way to describe this weekend at the box office is as follows: Two missing girls shined, a dance flick became a disaster and a 75-year-old classic was revisited. Overall, the weekend’s gross was just slightly lower than what it was this time last year.

Warner Bros.’ newest release, “Prisoners,” claimed the top spot with $20.8 million. Even though Warner Bros. released it during one of the quietest weekends of the year — and being a two-and-a-half-hour film about parents searching for two missing girls — audiences were clearly interested in watching.

Warner Bros. did a terrific job marketing the film. Instead of focusing on the heavy storyline, which would have deterred audiences, the company focused on the high-stakes race against time to find the missing girls. The trailers and television spots also focused on the ambiguity of the girls’ disappearance, which enticed viewers because they wanted to see how the story played out in this dark thriller.

The star power of Hugh Jackman as the desperate father and Jake Gyllenhaal as the detective in charge of the case also played to the film’s advantage. The two helped effectively promote the film by appearing on numerous talk shows and magazine covers.

While the film did well during its opening weekend, its future box office potential is up in the air. After all, in the next three weekends, there is a wave of adult-targeted genre films — “Rush,” “Gravity” and “Captain Phillips” — that might be tough competition for “Prisoners.”

The second new release this weekend was Sony’s 3D dance movie “Battle of the Year,” which bombed in fifth place with $4.6 million. Sony must not have known that the dance movie craze peaked years ago with “Honey,” “Stomp the Yard,” “Step Up” and “You Got Served.” Though the film starred singer Chris Brown, most people only care to listen to his music, not watch him act.

Sony will most likely not return on its investment of $20 million for the film, but the studio should not be too disappointed, given they have the highly anticipated “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2” opening next weekend.

The final “new” release in the top 10 this weekend was the 3D re-release of “The Wizard of Oz,” which claimed the ninth spot with an estimated $3.1 million. Originally released in 1939 and an instant classic, “The Wizard of Oz” is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Warner Bros. decided to re-release the film in 3D and IMAX to help promote next week’s special Blu-ray Disc release.

This opening is better than the 3D re-releases of other celebrated classics, such as “Top Gun: An IMAX 3D Experience” ($1.97 million), which was released in February, and last September’s IMAX re-release of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” ($1.67 million), but still not terribly impressive.

Published on September 24, 2013 at 9:34 pm