Universal's "Ted," Seth MacFarlane's tale of a potty-mouthed teddy bear come to life, beat the stuffing out of its box office rivals and pre-release projections with a stunning $54.1 million debut weekend.
Another of the weekend's R-rated openers, Channing Tatum's "Magic Mike," shook its box-office booty, bump-and-grinding its way to $39.1 million for Warner Bros., well beyond expectations. The audience for the No. 2 movie, not surprisingly, was 73 female.
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Both of them topped last week's No. 1 "Brave," as audiences went for raunch rather than the family fare that has dominated the past three weeks. Disney's latest Pixar film still made $34 million for third place, upping its domestic total to $133 million in two weeks.
"Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection" bowed to $26.3 million over the three days to claim the No. 4 spot for Lionsgate. The PG-13 rated movie averaged $12,193 on 2,163 locations.
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"Ted" was a knockout feature film debut for MacFarlane, the creator of TV's "Family Guy" who wrote, directed and voiced the title character "Ted." Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Joel McHale and Giovanni Ribisi co-star. The production budget on the R-rated comedy was $50 million, with Media Rights Capital financing.
"Ted" played on 3,239 screens — none 3D, like "Magic Mike" — and rolled up a $16,705 per-screen average. The audiences broke down 56 percent male, 52 percent under 30, a broader demographic than the tracking — which had skewed male and younger — had indicated. They gave the movie an "A-" CinemaScore.
"The marketing department did a great job early on of getting the word out to the target group — adult comedy fans — that this was a great movie," Universal's domestic distribution chief Nikki Rocco told TheWrap Sunday. "The talent worked hard promoting it and showing they were invested, too."
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"Magic Mike," made for just $7 million, represents a major win for Warners. It played on 2,930 screens, and had a $13,363 per-screen average. It might have gone even higher, but experienced a steep drop from Friday's $19.4 million to just $11.3 million on Saturday. The word of mouth was pretty good — audiences gave it a "B" CinemaScore.
DreamWorks' "People Like Us," the directing debut of writer Alex Kurtzman, missed out on the box-office bounty, opening to just $4.2 million.
Sony's "Men in Black 3" added $2.9 million over the weekend and in the process became the highest-grossing film in the franchise. It made $6.4 million overseas upping its worldwide gross to $599.4 million and surpassing the original "Men in Black," which made $589 million globally in 1997. Its domestic gross is $169.6 million.