By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Weekend Estimates by Barely-Winning-Land Klady
Tomorrowland barely wins the weekend (if it actually did), but it is an underwhelming Memorial Day 3-Day anyway you slice it. It’s not a flying car wreck, as it may well break the Top 30 of Memorial Day weekend numbers… but it’s not the thing of futuristic dreams. (X-Men did $91 million over 3 days last year). Solid holds for both of last weekend’s chick flicks Mad Amy: Singing Road and Furiosa Perfect 4. The Sam Raimi-producer/Gil Kenan-directed Poltergeist reboot opens to more than decent horror, but utterly non-phenom, numbers. Per-screen heroes were I’ll See You In My Dreams and Studio Ghibli’s When Marnie Was There.
And I thought I was the only one who was jet-lagged…
Last year, Godzilla did a similar number over Memorial Day Weekend last year… in its second weekend. Epic did a slightly better number opening Memorial Day Weekend in 2013… #4 for the weekend, behind F&F6, Hangover 3, and Trek 2.
You have to go back to 2010 to find a Top 3 number as low as the apparent winning weekend number this Memorial Day weekend. And Shrek Forever After did $70 million and the only other openers were MacGruber and Kites.
In other words… this Tomorrowland number is very soft.
And the Poltergeist number is also weak. The reported cost is $35 million, so the number is not as unpleasant as Tomorrowland (which could make things up in foreign), but still not thrilling. This is another film where international can really flip the success script.
The win of Pitch Perfect 2 is already well defined. The hold was solid, but not sensational. But the movie is still a cash cow. Less so Mad Max: Fury Road, which is holding a little better, but started at a lower level. A couple weeks to $100 million domestic used to be great. Nowadays, there are a couple hundred movies that have done it faster. Amazingly, Max is now hoping that international will get the film up to Kingsman: The Secret Service levels.
Meanwhile, Avengers: Age of Ultron passed the $400 million mark domestically and $1.2 billion worldwide.
Only two films managed a $10k per-screen over the 3 days: I’ll See You In My Dreams, expanding to 26 screens, and When Marnie Was Here, the perhaps-final Studio Ghibli film on 2 via GKids.
