Box office

BOX OFFICE BINGO: A lot of people found the time to spend indoors in the dark over the holiday weekend, with most of them flocking family-style to Despicable Me 2, which enjoyed one of the best openings ever for an animated film, pulling in over $82.5 for the three-day weekend and $142m during its first five days . The other high-profile debut, Gore Verbinski’s critically ambushed reimagining of The Lone Ranger, stumbled out of the starting gate and barely finished in the money. By contrast, the next three finishers are all showing encouraging vital signs, suffering relatively modest week-over-week drops and averaging north of $5k apiece.

1. Despicable Me 2 (Universal) – $82.5m, 3,997 theaters, $20,645 avg.
2. The Lone Ranger (Disney) – $29.4m, 3,904 theaters, $7,539 avg.
3. The Heat (Fox) $25m – (-36.1%), 3,184 theaters, $7,852 avg.
4. Monsters University (Disney) – $19.6m (-57.0%), 3,739 theaters, $5,239 avg.
5. World War Z (Paramount) – $18.2m (-38.9%), 3,316 theaters, $5,489 avg.

The other debut, Lionsgate’s Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain, over-performed, grossing a hair over $10m and averaging $11,530 on 876 screens to finish #8 behind Sony’s White House Down ($13.5m, -45.7% in week two) and WB’s Man of Steel ($11.4m, -45.0% in week four). More on Box Office Mojo. (7/8a)