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By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Saturday, August 1st, 2015 - 13 Comments »
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Friday Estimates by Impossible Klady 5

Friday Estimatest 2015-08-01 at 9.22.08 AM

Remember how Max Max: Fury Road‘s opening was a disappointment? This opening for Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation is pretty similar. This one will open to a few million more. But it’s that same kind of feeling… good movie… why aren’t more people leaping to get to the theater? I mean, San Andreas will out-open it. San-F-ing-Andreas. It’s been so long since that title has been bandied about, it’s as though it never happened.

Mission will outgross Max 4 both domestically and internationally. But this is the era of box office in which we live. It’s not about the CG and comic books… it’s about international box office. Every Mission movie has done more international box office than any Max, M:I 4 doing more than double what Max 4 has done. So count on that. And with Chinese funding, Mission will hope to take its all-time international high ($485m) and push it up over $650 million on international alone, making a domestic gross around $175 million moot.

Still… not a sensational domestic opening. Better than the first three, but even with the last film doing strong business and being great, there seems to be a glass ceiling on this franchise (not dissimilar to Star Trek, though that series reset its ceiling with JJ Abrams).

Vacation, which was moved into an overripe 11-film Warner Bros summer, is, box office-wise, a slightly stronger sequel to Hot Pursuit. It’s turning out that the only true hit of Warner Bros summer is, amazingly, the aforementioned San Andreas, which did $467 million worldwide. Was this summer a Dan Fellman strategy that got him fired? Possibly. But it doesn’t seem like him. Nor does Sue Kroll’s marketing team seem this incapable of selling their wares. But Sue won this battle and now has Dan’s seat at the table in addition to her own from which to watch The Man From U.N.C.L.E. close out their sad summer with a (make flatulent noise). Better times ahead.

Drops around the Top Ten were pretty standard, except for Paper Towns, which started out soft and dropped like a stone yesterday. Between this and Me And Earl And The Dying Girl, Fox needs to be shaking its collective head and wondering how they got to these flops from last summer’s The Fault In Our Stars giddiness. Don’t feel too bad… SummitGate is trying to figure out the same thing about the Divergent series vs Twilight.

The happiest news at the box office weekend is in limited releases of The End of the Tour, The Best of Enemies, and Listen To Me Marlon, which did, respectively, $10.9k, $3460, and $4700 per screen yesterday. Tour is not at the top of the A24 list of limited openings, but it is a solid start. And those are good numbers for the docs. For Enemies, the number is better than The Wolfpack or Dior & I, which each did over $1 million theatrically and is along the lines of The Salt of the Earth. It’s not going to be Amy… or even Citizenfour. But it will do very well for a doc.

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13 Comments »

13 Responses to “Friday Estimates by Impossible Klady 5”

  1. brack says:
    August 1, 2015 at 11:36 am

    It’s a the 5th M:I movie, and the best domestic opening for Cruise was “only” $64.8m with War of the Worlds. Expecting a bigger opening for Cruise at this point in his career seems unrealistic. And why bring up San Andreas’ opening? Not even the same genre. A disaster flick with “The Rock” probably should have opened better imo.

  2. jack says:
    August 1, 2015 at 7:17 pm

    “Magic Mike XXL” is also a true hit. The $15 million film had already grossed more than $102 million in worldwide.

    Funny thing is that “Max Max: Fury Road” will outgross “San Andreas” domestically. Still, “Max Max: Fury Road” is one of the biggest moneyloser in 2015 (probably on the “Battleship”-level), and we will never see another “Mad Max” sequel. On the other hand, “Mission Impossible ” and even “Terminator” will get sequels. (With the China release, “Terminator Genisys” will outgross “Max Max: Fury Road” in worldwide.)

    btw, “Max Max: Fury Road” will has zero chance to get major nominations in Oscar. Oscar voters won’t love this film as much as critics do. “Max Max: Fury Road” is just a small arthouse film with huge budget.

  3. Gus says:
    August 1, 2015 at 7:36 pm

    Jack… Where you coming from on this Mad Max as major-money-loser claim? It’s already covered more than its budget on BO alone and will surely cover P&A after ancillaries, no? It’s not some world-beater but at $370M worldwide, it should be fine in the long run.

  4. Dr Wally Rises says:
    August 2, 2015 at 3:14 am

    Fury Road is also by far and away the best movie of a disappointing Summer. Quality has to count for something, right? Last Summer some legitimately good movies (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, X Men Days of Future Past, Guardians of the Galaxy, Edge of Tomorrow) sneaked into the studio mainstream. This season has been mainly mediocrity.

  5. Kevin says:
    August 2, 2015 at 8:49 am

    This summer was pretty great… I loved MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, INSIDE OUT, ANT-MAN, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION…

    And everyone should check out the totally awesome TURBO KID when it comes out later this month!

  6. Gus says:
    August 2, 2015 at 9:27 am

    I’d say I am happier with the films that have come out this year than last. Any summer that drops films as good as Mad Max, Inside Out, MMXXL, and Mission Impossible 5 is a strong one to me.

    Favorites this year:

    MMXXL
    Mad Max
    Mommy
    Inside Out
    Ex Machina
    Stanford Prison Experiment
    Cartel Land

    Haven’t seen Mission Impossible 5 yet but will probably get to it this week.

  7. movieman says:
    August 2, 2015 at 9:30 am

    Does anybody know the story behind Weinstein’s dump of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet”?
    The 2013 Variety review was a rave.
    Yet it sat on the shelf for 2 years, and now this ignominious fate.
    Weinstein didn’t even bother opening it in Manhattan.
    And the same Cleveland arthouse that played “Amelie” for 9 months back in the day is only showing it once a freaking day.
    Adding insult to injury, Netflix doesn’t even acknowledge its existence in their database.
    What’s the deal here?
    Anyone??

  9. movieman says:
    August 2, 2015 at 11:20 am

    Interesting, Gus. Thanks for that.
    Since Harvey was involved, I figured it must be something like that.
    I still hope to see it some day.

  10. Nick Rogers says:
    August 2, 2015 at 1:35 pm

    Surprisingly, it’s playing at one theater in Indy — two showings a day, albeit at 10:45 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. Caught it yesterday. Like “Micmacs,” it’s slight next to Jeunet’s other work (whether alone or with Caro), but I was engaged until the finale’s abrupt, awkward shift toward media satire.

    What’s hilarious is that it carries a PG rating, but a truck driver with whom T.S. hitches a ride is wearing a baseball cap that clearly says FUCKIN on it.

  11. movieman says:
    August 2, 2015 at 4:18 pm

    That’s hilarious.
    I guess nobody was paying much attention over at the MPAA.
    Even one “fuck” should have automatically branded it “PG-13.”
    Of course, that inattentiveness/disregard seems to be plaguing the film every step of its post-2013-festival-launch way.
    Was it shown in 3-D at your theater, Nick? Variety made it sound like
    the sort of movie worth paying a 3-D surcharge for.
    They actually made (favorable) comparisons to “Hugo.” (Yowza.)

  12. Nick Rogers says:
    August 2, 2015 at 4:39 pm

    No, it was in 2D even though this theater has 3D capabilities. That said, the presentation even in 2D was quite good. I was pleased to see it at a theater where the projection was crisp and the colors popped. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to compare it to “Hugo,” but again, I enjoyed it.

  13. movieman says:
    August 2, 2015 at 4:57 pm

    Well, I guess I won’t be seeing it in 3-D, lol.
    At this rate, it’ll be lucky to ever get released on DVD (in the U.S. anyway; it’s already available on home video in Europe and elsewhere).
    Like I said before, Netflix doesn’t even seem to be aware of its existence which is utterly bizarre.

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