Box office

YOUR WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Universal’s Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg-starring buddy action-comedy 2 Guns debuted with $27.4m, making back nearly half of its $61m cost, and besting a field of incumbents that nonetheless held up reasonably well. But another animated feature fizzled, as The Smurfs 2 grossed $18.2 million from Friday to Sunday, about half of what its predecessor earned on the same weekend of 2011. The Sony film’s five-day total was $27.8 million, about what 2 Guns earned in three days, Rollingstone.com helpfully pointed out. But the real action this weekend went down in the art house circuit, as Cate Blanchett’s scenery-chewing, Oscar-nom shoo-in performance powered Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine to a per-screen average of $40,440 in 50 theaters, while Sundance favorite The Spectacular Now did even better, opening on just four screens but earning an average of $50k.

1. 2 Guns (Uni) – $27.4m, 3,025/$9,045 average (debut)
2. The Wolverine (Fox) – $21.7m (-59.1%), 3,924/$5,536 average (week 2)
3. The Smurfs 2 (Sony) – $18.2m, 3,866/$4,708 average (debut)
4. The Conjuring (WB) – $13.7m (-38.5%), 3,115/$4,385 average (week 3)
5. Despicable Me 2 (Uni) – $10.4m (-36.7%), 3,207/$3,240 average (week 5)

Btw, the aggregate domestic box office for July was $1.37 billion, making it the second-highest-grossing month of all-time behind July 2011 ($1.395 billion), according to Box Office Mojo stats. Overall, the summer 2013 box office is up 11% from last year at this point. Even if August is awful—which is possible, though unlikely—the season will still be the highest-grossing one ever at the domestic box office. (8/5a)