Box Office: If ‘Bad Grandpa’ Qualifies It Is Now the Top-Grossing Doc of the Year

Box Office: If ‘Bad Grandpa’ Qualifies It Is Now the Top-Grossing Doc of the Year

I still haven’t decided if Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa counts as a documentary. It’s pretty much certainly not a nonfiction film, but if we qualify many docs as being simply reality material strung together with a narrative, then it might be a doc. And if it is, then it not only easily out-grossed all other docs at the box office this weekend but it also immediately took the crown for the entire year. Technically, it’s still $200k below Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain (another that’s hard to qualify, now that I’ve seen it), and while $200k is a lot of money for most films on this chart, Bad Grandpa is going to make that difference up quick. Today, in fact.

As for certain documentaries, The Square opened very well on only one screen, earning the weekend’s third-best per-screen average with $16k. Topping that total thanks to its being on three screens, meanwhile, was Spinning Plates, which made $21k. Other new releases include Long Shot: The Kevin Laue Story, which I’ve never heard of until now. The out-of-nowhere release made $7k on a single screen outside of Oakland.

Still-strong Inequality for All slipped a bit this weekend, pulling in less than $100k for the first time since it opened, but it should definitely have that $1m victory by next Monday’s report. Continuing releases that saw significant jumps include Muscle Shoals, which hit #3 for the weekend with $83k by nearly doubling its screen count, and Good Ol’ Freda, which more than doubled its previous take by also nearly doubling its locations, and Shepard and Dark.

Here is the reported weekend box office (with averages in parenthesis) for 10/25/13–10/27/13, including new and continuing releases:

1. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa — $32m ($9.6k)

2. Inequality for All — $83.1k ($0.9k)

3. Muscle Shoals — $83.0k ($1.5k)

4. Metallica Through the Never — $48k ($2.2k)

5. Generation Iron — $27k ($1.1k)

6. The Summit — $25k ($0.5k)

7. Spinning Plates — $21k ($6.9k)

8. The Square — $16k ($16.4k)

9. Linsanity — $13k ($1.6k)

10. American Promise — $11k ($2.8k)

11. 20 Feet From Stardom — $9k ($0.8k)

12. Good Ol’ Freda — $8k ($0.6k)

13. Long Shot: The Kevin Laue Story — $7k ($7.0k)

14. Les Salauds — $4.4k ($4.4k)

15. Meerkats — $3.7k ($1.2k)

16. After Tiller — $3k ($0.4k)

17. When Comedy Went to School — $2.2k ($0.6k)

18. Shepard and Dark — $1.63k ($0.8k)

19. Birth of the Living Dead — $1.62k ($0.2k)

20. Guitar Innovators: John Fahey & Nels Cline — $1.5k ($0.7k)

21. Let the Fire Burn — $1.2k ($0.6k)

22. The Informant — $0.5k ($0.3k)

23. Design Is One — $415 ($0.4k)

24. Free the Mind — $413 ($0.2k)

25. Fire in the Blood — $263 ($0.3k)

26. Flying Monsters 3D — $246 ($0.2k)

27. Broadway Idiot — $199 ($0.2k)

28. The Act of Killing– $64 ($0.1k)

And here is the current top 25 doc box office for 2013 (note the changeover from millions to thousands):

1. Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain — $32.2m
2. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa — $32.1m ($40m worldwide)
3. One Direction: This Is Us — $28.9m ($66.6m worldwide)
4. Hubble 3D (IMAX) — $4.9m
5. 20 Feet From Stardom — $4.7m
6. Metallica Through the Never — $3.4m
7. Unstoppable — $3.2m
8. To the Arctic (IMAX) — $2.9m
9. The Gatekeepers — $2.4m
10. Blackfish — $2.1m
11. Space Station 3D (IMAX) — $1.9m
12. Stories We Tell — $1.6m
13. Born to Be Wild (IMAX) — $1.56m
14. Girl Rising — $1.53m
15. Flying Monsters — $1.51m
16. Under the Sea 3D — $1.1m
     — -
17. Inequality for All — $937k
18. Generation Iron — $731k
19. 56 Up — $700k
20. Searching For Sugar Man — $686k
21. Deep Sea 3D (IMAX) — $668k
22. Salinger — $576k
23. Chasing Ice — $530k
24. Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorfs — $510k
25. The Act of Killing — $443k

Data pulled from Box Office Mojo and IMDb and Deadline and The Numbers.