Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation took $17m (£10.8m), falling into second spot.
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In its debut weekend, “Compton” brought in million at the box office, enough to rank as the biggest R-rated August opening since Universal’s “American Pie 2” in 2001, according to data from media tracking firm Rentrak.
Now that a story about a Hip-Hop group is proven to be viable commercially, who is worthy of the film treatment next?
Straight Outta Compton’s opening success is also important because it exceeded people’s expectations: Early projections said the film would only bring in about $25 million to $29 million-roughly half of what it actually earned.
Straight Outta Compton stars O’shea Jackson, Jr., Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Aldis Hodge, Neil Brown Jr., and Paul Giamatti.
Universal domestic distribution chief Nick Carpou labeled “Straight Outta Compton” as a “labor of love” that benefitted from being dramatically different from the kind of films flooding cinemas in recent months.
Universal had previously predicted a very conservative $25million to $30million opening.
Straight Outta Compton profiles N.W.A, the musical group credited with helping to popularise gansta rap.
Rounding out the top five were Josh Trank’s “The Fantastic Four” which added another $8 million and “The Gift” that grossed around $6.5 million from 2,503 domestic theaters. “Older audiences, we all know, don’t rush out opening weekend”.
There have been over 5.4 million downloads to date and it trended No. 1 across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for two days in a row.
The movie, which features racial divisions, police corruption, and gang culture, cost just $29million to produce – but, according to studio estimates on Sunday, it has nearly doubled that figure in box-office takings since Friday’s release.
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The Comcast-owned movie studio is having a historic year at the box office topping an industry record $5.53 billion worldwide in record time and having six films open at number one at the U.S. box office.
