Melissa McCarthy left the guys of “Entourage” in the dust, landing her first No. 1 box-office debut as a leading lady with an estimated $30 million weekend for the espionage comedy “Spy.”
The result added to the string of successes for McCarthy and writer-director Paul Feig, who first united on the 2011 hit “Bridesmaids.” While “Spy” fell short of the $39.1 million debut of their 2013 comedy “The Heat,” with Sandra Bullock, and came in a tad lower than some predicted, it was good enough to win a weekend lacking blockbuster punch but crowded with action, horror and the resurrected HBO series.
“It sets the table for a fantastic long run,” said Chris Aronson, head of distribution for 20th Century Fox.
The R-rated, action-heavy “Spy,” made for about $65 million, will depend on word-of-mouth and its generally glowing reviews to propel it further in the coming weeks. The film, in which McCarthy plays a desk-bound CIA officer sent into a James Bond-like European caper, has already made $56.5 million overseas.
Last week’s top film, “San Andreas,” the disaster movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, slid to second place with $26.4 million. “Insidious: Chapter 3” opened with an estimated $23 million.
But HBO’s “Entourage,” made for about $30 million, failed to compete with those releases. The film, released about four years after the series concluded, made $10.4 million over the weekend and has brought in a five-day total of $17.8 million since opening Wednesday.
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