'Identity Thief' Tops Box Office Again

By Jake Coyle, AP Entertainment Writer

NEW YORK -- Hollywood's latest films performed tepidly at the box-office on Oscar weekend, with Melissa McCarthy's Identity Thief returning to the top spot in its third week of release.

The Universal comedy earned $14.1 million on the weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, enough to regain the box-office title after losing it last week to 20th Century Fox's A Good Day to Die Hard. The Bruce Willis action sequel faded domestically, but not overseas, where it took in $35.7 million.

With a cumulative total of $93.7 million, Identity Thief is the biggest hit so far in 2013. Though the film has been badly reviewed by critics, the road trip duo of McCarthy and Jason Bateman has proved popular at the multiplexes, where no other comedy has been around to challenge it.

More than anything, Identity Thief has proven the stardom of McCarthy, following her breakout performance in Bridesmaids.

"The holding power of a film always gives you an idea of the strength of its concept or its star," said Nikki Rocco, Universal head of distribution. "In this case, it's both."

With the industry gathering for the Oscars on Sunday, it's always a weekend where moviegoers' attention goes more to the Academy Awards than the movie theater. For the fifth week in a row, the box office was down as compared to last year's business

One of the two new films in wide release, Lionsgate's (LGF) Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson action film, Snitch, opened with $13 million. That was a decent but not strong showing for Snitch in a year where action films have largely fared poorly.

Though A God Day to Die Hard, the fourth film in the franchise, led the box office last week, it slid 60% in its second week to $10 million. But it continued to dominate internationally, bringing it to a three-week worldwide total to $184.8 million. (It opened a week earlier in some countries.)

Earlier action films from Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Last Stand), Jason Statham (Parker) and Sylvester Stallone (Bullet to the Head) performed far worse.

The other new wide release was the Weinstein Co.'s Dark Skies, a PG-13 horror film starring Keri Russell. It debuted with $8.9 million.

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