By Maurice Bobb
Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker may be the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, but it was Seth Rogen and Zac Efron’s new film, “Neighbors,” that swung over the superhero sequel to the top of the box office this weekend.
The Nicholas Stoller-directed comedy about a raucous college fraternity that moves next door to new parents pulled in a hefty $51.1 million, the second-biggest opening weekend ever for a R-rated comedy behind “Ted” ($54 million) that wasn’t a sequel or spin off.
Debuting as the No. 1 movie in America is a huge win for Universal considering “Neighbors” only cost $18 million to produce. The movie even did well overseas under an alternate title, “Bad Neighbors,” raking in $34.5 million.
“The Amazing Spider-Man 2” fell to second place with $37.2 million, a sharp 59% drop from last weekend. Considering that both films fought for fans from the same age group, it was expected that the webslinger would draw fewer viewers, but the Marvel movie’s decline is still alarmingly higher than other comic book sequels like “Captain America 2″ (-56%), “Thor 2″ (-57%) and “Iron Man 3″ (-58%).
The other big debut was Jon Favreau’s “Chef,” which was only shown on six screens. The cooking comedy, which also stars Sofia Vergara, John Leguizamo, Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Downey, Jr., earned an impressive $204,201 in limited release.
Rounding out the top three was Nicki Minaj’s “The Other Woman,” which earned $9.25 million in its third weekend, for a grand total of $61.73 million domestic.
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