Weekend Review (3-Day)

Easy to Be Die Hard

It was a good weekend for A Good Day to Die Hard as it nosed out the competition to take top spot on the holiday charts with an estimated $24.9 million (all figures represent the 3-day portion of the Presidents Day frame). In an unexpectedly competitive session the three-hanky Safe Haven slotted third with $21.5 million; a jot behind the $23.4 million holdover of Identity Thief.

Two other films made national debuts. Kidcentric animation Escape from Planet Earth slipped into fourth with $15.9 million and trailing the field was the supernatural rom-com Beautiful Creatures grossing $7.4 million.

In the niches the Punjabi Singh vs. Kaur had a solid $117,000 bow at 24 venues and Korea’s The Berlin File had the best ever opening for that cinema with a gross of $142,000 from a scant 20 screens.

Exclusive debs saw the strongest response for Chile’s Oscar short-listed No with an initial box office of $69,700 from four engagements. Also potent was Like Someone in Love from Denmark with $21,300 at three sites.

Weekend revenues popped up to roughly $140 million for a sizeable 36% boost from seven days back. However, it wasn’t sufficient to stave off a 12% erosion from 2012 when holdovers of Safe House and The Vow led the field and newcomers Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and This Means War sputtered at the starting gate.

After a six-year hiatus, the fifth installment of the Die Hard franchise was expected to blow away the competition. Most of the new-title jump started the weekend with Thursday Valentine’s Day bows and the winner (by a whisker) was Safe Haven. A Good Day to Die Hard should wind up with about $37 million at the end of the long weekend but trackers were indicating considerably strong business in the region of $45 million.

The film not surprisingly skewed male with a 55% share according to exit demos. But it was also disappointingly older with 65% of the audience aged over 25.

Conversely, there were Nicholas Sparks’ Safe Haven that topped tracking projections. Again it came as little surprise that the initial crowd was 71% female but the edge came from a surprisingly fierce younger crowd, with 68% of weepers aged 25 and younger.

Escape from Planet Earth nicely filled the gap for family animated fare.

Strong holdover business left Beautiful Creatures with little more than scraps to forage over. The hybrid yarn proved difficult to market with its mix of traditional romance and offbeat occult elements and the film suffered from the second (or third) choice dilemma. Its demos revealed an audience that was 57% female and a carbon copy 57% aged 25-years and more junior. However, its potential crowd largely opted for the more traditional romance.

Apart from a surge for the Oscar shorts package, the contenders crowd was doing its best to keep up a little steam for the big event seven days hence. Expect some token theatrical bump for the big winners while the major rewards are now being engineered for ancillary exploitation.

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