By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Weekend Estimates by Carolina by 12 On A Late Pick 6 Klady
There is not much here to chew on.
Only two films are estimated to do over $5350 per screen and those films are on just four screens each (and still not reaching $10k per).
There are 5 Best Picture nominees still charting, but every one of them is in the downslope of their runs, on fewer screens than at their peak. The two December releases have done their best since being nominated and The Revenant will pass Mad Max: Fury Road at the domestic box office as the voting starts on Friday and may end up with a higher gross worldwide, but nothing exciting is happening on that front. There would have to be a major upset for a Best Picture win to squeeze more than $15m – $20m out of any of these movies. Of course, that would make a big difference to Spotlight‘s bottom line… almost none to Revenant.
The movie year so far has been soft, but not horrible. A lot of explaining why these movies have done okay… but not great. We’ve had 8 releases from the majors and their Dependents so far in 2016 and the results are consistently mediocre. The big indies have done the same… if not a little worse. The two leading films are sequels, both well off the franchise pace.
Can we blame Star Wars? No. It’s brought in great money since January 10/Weekend 3, but not disruptive money. They were in no one’s way. Star Wars brought summer box office to December… including the shorter window. (And for the record, nothing has been in Star Wars‘ way either.) At this point in their runs, Star Wars has about $20m left in the domestic tank, while Avatar, which started much more slowly, had about $120m left to add. In fact, Avatar‘s weekends were wildly behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the first 3 weekends and Avatar has had better weekends since, more so each next weekend. (This weekend, #8, $6.8m SW/$22.9m Av)
This is not meant to diminish Star Wars‘ breathtaking success. It is meant to point out how the effort to front-load grosses has evolved at light speed.
Like I said… looking around for something to eat at this table. Thin pickings. Happy Super Bowl!
DEADPOOL should be a pretty big hit next weekend…
It’s not diminishing Star Wars, Dave. It’s just ignoring, that Avatar had hardly any real competition until Alice in Wonderland. That’s what happened.
the deadpool ads on cable here every three minutes are annoying as hell. reynolds as a bigmouth jokey snark-merchant who doesn’t give a fuck, really, you don’t say, how subversive! such similar-sounding ‘suicide squad’ snark. same snark, different day.
For leahnz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih4VYnbm6Sw
holy shitballs batman it’s ryanville
i’m in squaresville and ryan’s the mayor
forget it jake, it’s ryantown