By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Friday Estimates by Klad3
Taken it to the bank. The reviews on this one are pretty terrible, but while this opening won’t match Taken 2, it could take the record for a January opening… or come up a little short. But either way, this movie will be close to $100 million domestic when all is said and done and will add more than $125 million internationally to make it yet another cash cow, even if it’s not quite Lucy for Luc Besson. Looking forward to “Taken 4” with Shia LaBeouf as the middle-aged replacement for Liam Neeson.
Selma‘s expansion from 22 to 2179 screens is a success. It is not the explosive box office event that some expected. But it is more than solid for a small film, even with a big distributor. I can’t really find any solid comps for the film. The only context that I have made any headway with, after exhausting the question of January expansions, is in the last decade of Oscar contenders, with Zero Dark Thirty and Her. But neither is a great fit. ZD30 expanded better both in gross and per-screen, but still topped out under $100m domestic. Her didn’t expand as wide (1729 screens) in January and never had a weekend as big as the one that Selma is currently experiencing. Will the film get a combination bump from Oscar nominations and Martin Luther King Jr Day next weekend? Right now, it looks destined to do $40-60 million domestically.
The Unbroken/Into The Woods twinsie thing continues, as Unbroken puts a little distance between them on Friday, but is still a few million behind the musical overall. It’s one of the oddest box office things I have ever seen. Both films should crack $100 million domestic this weekend. Both are looking at a bit under $120 million domestic in the end. Neither has done much internationally yet.
Hobbit 3 will close in on $800 million worldwide this weekend.
The Imitation Game remains strong and will pass $40 million domestic this weekend. The rest of the Oscar pack will be looking to return to the Top Ten after nominations next week.
(10:15a – Chart corrected to reflect mistakes on Imitation Game and Museum daily grosses)
Holy disappointment, Selma. Weak wide expansion. Should have waited for next weekend for multiple reasons.
Shia LaBeouf is middle-aged?
This deserves a mention
Inherent Vice $3,000,000 1093% 645 $4,651/per $4,578,965
“Hobbit 3 will close in on $800 million worldwide this weekend. For confirmation, check out this press release which is dated for Monday.”
The date of the article is “January 12, 2014” and it is about “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”. [EDITED]
The first Unrated TAKEN was a an excellent piece of macho theatrics, but the Turkey-set sequel was lame (c’mon getting your daughter to detonating grenades in downtown Istanbul so Neeson can get a geographic location…) and this one look like FUGITIVE-LITE-IN-LA.
Oliver Megaton (2 and 3) is not a very good replacement for Pierre Morell but these films will make money.
BTW Im pretty disturbed by international distributors editing their films for violence in order to get family ratings. This occurred with DIE HARD 5 (link: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/a-good-day-to-die-hard/24282/a-good-day-to-die-hard-uk-rating-and-cuts-confirmed) and TAKEN 3 (http://www.movie-censorship.com/news.php?ID=8377).
Funny, you call SELMA’s expansion a success, while The Wrap sez it “stumbled.” All in how you look at it, I guess. FWIW, I agree with you.
I think I’ll wait until MLK weekend to decide on Selma. I think it will see a good hold and if “wink wink” it wins at GG Awards tonight, then the road ahead should be pretty good.