Box Office: Can Jennifer Lopez's 'Back-Up Plan' be No. 1 and still bomb?

Jennifer Lopez has been away from the big screen for quite some time and it appears "The Back-Up Plan" was the wrong plan of attack for her comeback.  The CBS Films comedy found the top slot on Friday, but only made $4.2 million in doing so. 

If lucky, the horribly reviewed rom com will make $10-12 million over the entire weekend and that still might not be enough to win the 3-day crown.  Considering the onslaught of media CBS paid for to open the picture, it will be hard to see "Plan" making a profit anytime soon.  On the bright side, it's an improvement over the company's disastrous first release, "Extraordinary Measures" in January.

"How To Train Your Dragon" found some more fire in second place with another $3.4 million and a new cume of $166.4 million.  It's expected to make between $12-14 million for the weekend and jump into the top slot.

Still mining the older adult audience in third was the Tina Fey/Steve Carell comedy "Date Night."  After Friday's $3.3 million it's overall gross now stands at $56 million.  However, a benchmark of $80 million will be difficult to hit with May's heavy hitters in the wings.  That's probably significantly less than 20th Century Fox was expecting with the first big screen pairing of these well known comedy stars.

Fourth place went to "The Losers." Even with mostly positive reviews the action comedy wasn't able to differentiate itself in the marketplace and found only $3.2 million on Friday.  The Joel Silver produced flick should end up with around $10 million over the weekend making it a big disappointment for stars Zoe Saldana and Chris Evans.  And ensemble's or not, it's also Saldana's second underperformer in a row after last weekend's "Death at a Funeral."  

Most disappointing was "Kick-Ass'" 62% drop from first last week to fifth this Friday.  The R-rated superhero flick has had very strong holds overseas, but stateside appears to be a different story.  With another $2.8 million on Friday, it's made $28.2 million in just eight days.  At this pace it will need a miracle to gross more than $45 million in it's theatrical lifetime.  Certainly the spring's biggest surprise considering all the positive buzz leading up to its release.

Look for updated weekend estimates tomorrow on HitFix.
 

Gregory Ellwood
Editor-in-Chief, Co-Founder

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With over a decade of experience in the movie industry, Ellwood survived working for two major studios and has written for Variety, MSN and the LA Times. A co-founder of HitFix, Ellwood spends his time relaxing hitting 3’s on the basketball court and following his beloved Clippers.