Someone from Pinellas County was bound to win Hollywood's weekend box office race. The surprise was who finished on top: Will Packer, not Winter the dolphin.
Packer, a 1991 St. Petersburg High graduate turned Hollywood producer, scored his seventh No. 1 debut with No Good Deed, starring Idris Elba as an escaped murderer terrorizing a mother and her children. No Good Deed earned an estimated $24.5 million on 2,175 screens, despite a dismal 9 percent approval rating from critics on RottenTomatoes.com.
Dolphin Tale 2, chiefly filmed in Clearwater, was runnerup with $16.6 million on 3,656 screens. That's down 14 percent from the debut weekend of 2011's original Winter adventure. The sequel scored a 73 percent "fresh" rating at RottenTomatoes.com.
Steve Persall, Times movie critic