NEW YORK: The dystopian science fiction thriller “Elysium” topped the weekend box office with $30.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, enough to beat three newcomers, including the Jennifer Aniston comedy “We’re the Millers.”
Sony’s “Elysium,” directed by Neill Blomkamp and starring Matt Damon, opened in line with expectations, but still debuted somewhat modestly for a $115 million action film. It couldn’t match Blomkamp’s previous film, the $30 million “District 9,” which opened with $37.4 million in August 2009.
But “Elysium” was able to come out on top in a crowded weekend, with three other new wide releases: The R-rated Warner Bros. comedy “We’re the Millers,” starring Jason Sudeikis and Aniston ($26.6 million over the weekend, a strong $38 million since opening Tuesday night); Disney’s “Cars” spinoff “Planes” ($22.5 million) and Fox’s fantasy sequel “Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters” ($14.6 million over the weekend, $23.5 million since Wednesday).
“District 9” was something of a phenomenon: A relatively low-budget science-fiction film from a first-time, South African director that made over $210 million worldwide and landed four Academy Awards nominations, including best picture. Like “District 9,” “Elysium” is rife with allegory, a futuristic tale heavy with contemporary themes of wealth discrepancy, health care and immigration. But it was also made with more than three times the budget of “District 9” and added stars Damon and Jodie Foster.
Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony said the studio was proud to release an ambitious film like “Elysium” and said that it would be “very profitable” for Sony. The film launched internationally in a handful of markets, including Russia, taking in $10.9 million overseas. With the added star power of Damon and Foster, “Elysium” should be a bigger draw than “District 9” was abroad.
“International is going to be the big, big win on this film for us,” said Bruer.
The weekend was enough to push the box office just past the pace of last year, which means that despite several spectacular flops this summer, Hollywood’s 2013 is currently equal to its 2012. The year-to-date gross of $7 billion is even with last year, although attendance is down 2.9 percent.
“Yes, there’s been some high-profile failures,” said Chris Aronson, head of distribution for Fox. “But the summer’s been fantastic despite the gloom and doom some in the media have portrayed.”
The market was crowded with family films, including new releases “Percy Jackson” and “Planes,” as well as holdovers like Sony’s “Smurfs 2” ($9.5 million in its second week) and Fox’s “Turbo” ($2.3 million in its fourth week). With the box office led by two R-rated films, it made for a diverse weekend of movie-going.
“It used to be called the dog days of August — and you still get some junk thrown in to August,” said Paul Dergarabedian, analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com. “But it can also be the land of opportunity for films that aren’t cookie-cutter for audiences that are burned out by blockbusters.”
‘Elysium’ tops box office with $30.5 million
‘Elysium’ tops box office with $30.5 million
Filipinos master disaster readiness, one roll of the dice at a time
- In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon
MANILA: In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon.
The teenagers huddled around the table leap into action, shouting instructions and acting out the correct strategies for just one of the potential catastrophes laid out in the board game called Master of Disaster.
With fewer than half of Filipinos estimated to have undertaken disaster drills or to own a first-aid kit, the game aims to boost lagging preparedness in a country ranked the most disaster-prone on earth for four years running.
“(It) features disasters we’ve been experiencing in real life for the past few months and years,” 17-year-old Ansherina Agasen told AFP, noting that flooding routinely upends life in her hometown of Valenzuela, north of Manila.
Sitting in the arc of intense seismic activity called the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” the Philippines endures daily earthquakes and is hit by an average of 20 typhoons each year.
In November, back-to-back typhoons drove flooding that killed nearly 300 people in the archipelago nation, while a 6.9-magnitude quake in late September toppled buildings and killed 79 people around the city of Cebu.
“We realized that a lot of loss of lives and destruction of property could have been avoided if people knew about basic concepts related to disaster preparedness,” Francis Macatulad, one of the game’s developers, told AFP of its inception.
The Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation (ASSIST), where Macatulad heads business development, first dreamt up the game in 2013, after Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the central Philippines and left thousands dead.
Launched six years later, Master of Disaster has been updated this year to address more events exacerbated by human-driven climate change, such as landslides, drought and heatwaves.
More than 10,000 editions of the game, aimed at players as young as nine years old, have been distributed across the archipelago nation.
“The youth are very essential in creating this disaster resiliency mindset,” Macatulad said.
‘Keeps on getting worse’
While the Philippines has introduced disaster readiness training into its K-12 curriculum, Master of Disaster is providing a jolt of innovation, Bianca Canlas of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) told AFP.
“It’s important that it’s tactile, something that can be touched and can be seen by the eyes of the youth so they can have engagement with each other,” she said of the game.
Players roll a dice to move their pawns across the board, with each landing spot corresponding to cards containing questions or instructions to act out disaster-specific responses.
When a player is unable to fulfil a task, another can “save” them and receive a “hero token” — tallied at the end to determine a winner.
At least 27,500 deaths and economic losses of $35 billion have been attributed to extreme weather events in the past two decades, according to the 2026 Climate Risk Index.
“It just keeps on getting worse,” Canlas said, noting the lives lost in recent months.
The government is now determining if it will throw its weight behind the distribution of the game, with the sessions in Valenzuela City serving as a pilot to assess whether players find it engaging and informative.
While conceding the evidence was so far anecdotal, ASSIST’s Macatulad said he believed the game was bringing a “significant” improvement in its players’ disaster preparedness knowledge.
“Disaster is not picky. It affects from north to south. So we would like to expand this further,” Macatulad said, adding that poor communities “most vulnerable to the effects of climate change” were the priority.
“Disasters can happen to anyone,” Agasen, the teen, told AFP as the game broke up.
“As a young person, I can share the knowledge I’ve gained... with my classmates at school, with people at home, and those I’ll meet in the future.”
