Controversial Ridley Scott biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings opened in first place at the US box office this weekend with a middling haul of $24.5m (£15.7m).
The film, which has drawn accusations of “whitewashing” for its use of white actors to portray characters of north African and Middle Eastern origin, replaced The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part One at No 1. The dystopian sequel, now in second spot, had held the top spot for the previous three weeks and this week passed $600m worldwide.
Exodus: Gods and Kings, which cost a reported $140m to make, has suffered from mixed reviews and negative buzz over casting. Scott has defended the decision to recruit Hollywood luminaries such as Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton to play Jewish leader Moses and Egyptian Pharoah Ramses on the grounds that financiers would not have been interested in funding the movie had he cast “Mohammad so-and-so from such-and-such”.
However, Time called the film a “cinematically uninspired retelling of the Moses story” and the New York Times described it as “both woefully insufficient and much too much”. The film’s opening also compared unfavourably to those of other 21st-century biblical movies, with Darren Aronofsky’s Noah having taken $43.7m on debut in March and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ bowing with $83.3m in 2004.
The weekend’s only other new film, Chris Rock comedy drama Top Five, landed in fourth place with a respectable $7.2m debut. Rock wrote and directed the movie, which he also stars in as a standup comic trying to make it as a serious actor.
The top five was rounded out by animated sequel Penguins of Madagascar in third place with $7.3m in its third week for a total of $78.8m, and Japanophile Disney animation Big Hero Six in fifth with $6.5m in its sixth week of release for a total of $185.3m.
Meanwhile the Oscar-tipped Reese Witherspoon drama Wild, about a woman who sets off on a 1,000-mile trek to try and heal following the death of her mother, entered the top 10 for the first time. Jean-Marc Vallée’s film took $1.55m in its second week to secure 10th place after its star picked up a Golden Globe nomination for best actress in a motion picture, drama.
