‘San Andreas’ Set to Rock Box Office with $47 Million Debut, ‘Aloha’ Left in the Dust

Warner Bros.’ “San Andreas” is no box office disaster, with the 3D action film drawing $18.2 million on Friday, setting it on track for a projected weekend haul of $47 million at 3,777 locations and smashing past early estimates that put it around the $40 million mark. Cameron Crowe’s “Aloha,” meanwhile, was left in the dust, eyeing a modest $10-11 million weekend after a slow Friday that drew approximately $3.6 million at 2,815 sites.

Critics may not be giving “San Andreas” points for its brains, but the Dwayne Johnson film is certainly demonstrating its brawn — its strong performance is the best of Johnson’s career outside the “Fast & Furious” franchise, handily beating the opening weekend haul for “Hercules” ($29.8 million), “Pain and Gain” ($20.2 million) and “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” ($40.5 million).

There’s still a chasm between “San Andreas” and the opening weekend tallies for Roland Emmerich’s similarly cataclysmic movies, “The Day After Tomorrow” ($68.7 million) and “2012” ($65.2 million), but it’s a vast improvement over last year’s “Into the Storm” ($17.3 million) and “Pompeii” ($10.3 million), which barely measured on the Richter scale.

SEE MORE:‘San Andreas': Experts Break Down What’s Realistic, What’s Not

While the romantic “Aloha” offers counter-programming for viewers who may have grown tired of the endless CGI carnage that has become a staple of summer blockbusters, the Bradley Cooper film has received a critical mauling. A $10-11 million opening is in line with Crowe’s two most recent drama offerings — 2011’s “We Bought a Zoo” garnered $9.3 million and went on to make $75.6 million, buoyed by the star power of Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson, while 2005’s “Elizabethtown” bowed to $10.6 million on its way to a $26.8 million total.

Elsewhere, Universal’s “Pitch Perfect 2″ is still humming along, eyeing a weekend total of around $14 million in week three, while Warner Bros.’ “Mad Max: Fury Road” clearly has plenty of gas in the tank, on track for a three-day total of around $13 million. Disney’s “Tomorrowland” is nipping at “Max’s” heels for a similar $13 million weekend.

Marvel’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron” is still showing its box office muscle in week five, with Joss Whedon’s superhero sequel expected to pass $425 million this weekend, which could relegate “Aloha” to sixth place on the chart. 20th Century Fox’s “Poltergeist” remake scared up $2.6 million on Friday, looking to chill audiences to the tune of just under $8 million in its second weekend.

Via: Variety

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San Andreas Ready to Blow – In Theaters and In Real Life

Admit it, there's nothing more fun than sitting in a dark theatre, munching on a bucket of buttery popcorn, and watching the Earth get demolished. In the latest round of catastrophic flicks, California is destroyed as the famous San Andreas Fault unleashes unimaginable (and unrealistic) devastation across the state.

The new film, San Andreas, depicts the rupture of an unknown fault near the Hoover Dam in Nevada, which gets the destructive ball rolling by setting off powerful earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault. And although earthquakes are nothing new to Californians, and pose serious threats along the famous fault, Hollywood has once again thrown caution (and science) to the wind in order to feed our catastrophic needs.

The San Andreas Fault is a very real hazard. At almost 800 miles long, the fault marks the boundary where the North American plate meets the Pacific plate. And it's the movement of these plates against each other that cause the powerful quakes characteristic to the region.

A recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey shows the inevitability of just such a quake, which is predicted to hit within the next couple of decades.

"The new likelihoods are due to the inclusion of possible multi-fault ruptures, where earthquakes are no longer confined to separate, individual faults, but can occasionally rupture multiple faults simultaneously," lead author of the study and USGS scientist, Ned Field says. "This is a significant advancement in terms of representing a broader range of earthquakes throughout California's complex fault system."

The study shows that the likelihood of a magnitude 8 or larger earthquake in the next 30 years has risen from about 4.7 percent to around 7 percent, based on recent findings. However, the area most at risk is along the southern end of the fault, not the northern end near San Francisco.

Via: The Science Times

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