Specialty Box Office: 'Moonrise Kindgom' Continues To Soar; 'Hotel' Hits $25 Million

New films didn't make much of a dent this weekend, yet the specialty box office continued to soar thanks to breakouts "Moonrise Kingdom" and "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel." Each posted very impressive numbers in their second and fifth weekends, respectively.

Their performances overshadowed a group of generally unremarkable limited debuts - "5 Broken Cameras," "Hardflip," "High School" and Oscar-nominated animated film "A Cat in Paris."

Check out the full rundown below.

The Debuts:

"5 Broken Cameras" (Kino Lorber)
Palestinian-Israeli documentary "5 Broken Cameras" -- which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year -- debuted with an exclusive run at New York's Film Forum. It grossed $6,500 over the weekend, and $8,412 since opening last Wednesday.  Distributor Kino Lorber will expand the film to San Francisco, Boston and DC later this month, with further expansion through the summer.

"High School" (Anchor Bay)
Adrien Brody-starrer "High School" was released on an aggressive 200 screens this weekend care of Anchor Bay and the results were not good. Averaging just $403 per screen, the John Stalberg, Jr.-directed comedy took in only $80,600. There's unlikely to be much more where that came from.

"A Cat in Paris" (GKids)
GKids released an English-dubbed version of Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol's Oscar-nominated animated film "A Cat in Paris" on six screens this weekend, and it took in $36,100, averaging a mildly respectable $6,017.

"Hardflip" (Rocky Mountain)
Johnny Remo's skateboarding drama "Hardflip" didn't fare that well this weekend either, taking in $55,400 from 22 screens in its opening frame. Its estimated average was just $2,518.

The Holdovers:

"Moonrise Kingdom" (Focus Features)
Focus Features-released "Moonrise Kingdom" held up very nicely after last weekend's record breaking debut, expanding from 4 to 16 theaters and jumping 62% in grosses. It took in $849,000, which made for a massive $53,060 -- by far the best second weekend average for any specialty release this year. That gave the film a total gross of $1,709,000 despite an extremely limited release. It also impressively jumped 42% from Friday to Saturday, which bodes very well.

"'Moonrise' continues to generate outstanding results this weekend," Focus Features said in a statement. "Saturday's large increase over Friday (42 per cent) reflects theaters adding more seats in response to demand (there were sellouts throughout the day). The estimated $53K theater average defines the film’s powerful box office momentum."

The film is having another expansion this upcoming Friday, and if it can continue the momentum of its first 10 days, Focus Features could be looking at a major indie breakout. The last film to post a higher average in its second weekend was Oscar-favored "The King's Speech," which averaged $54,086 from six screens back in 2010. That film went on to gross $135 million.

"The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" (Fox Searchlight)
John Madden's older-audience skewing "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" continued to also prove itself one of 2012's true indie breakouts this weekend care of Fox Searchlight, crossing the $25 million mark.

On 1,294 screens (up slightly from 1,233), the film -- which stars Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy and Tom Wilkinson as a group of seniors retiring in India -- dropped just 28% to gross a fantastic $4,600,000 over the weekend. That gave it a $3,555 per-theater-average and put it in the overall top six. The film's total now stands at $25,496,605.

The film is now the highest grossing indie of 2012, and a final gross north of $40 million is quite possible. It's already grossed over $100 million worldwide (more on that here).

For a report on other holdover releases, including "The Intouchables," "Bernie" and "First Position," continue to the next page.