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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Friday Estimates by The Klady

Friday Estimates 2016-04-09 at 10.20.42 AM

It’s funny. Tammy rolled out over 5 days in the summer of 2014 and got its ass kicked in the press (I wasn’t kicking its ass, but I wasn’t as generous as I should have been) for a $21.6m 3-day and a $31.3m 5-day. It grossed $85m domestically and just over $100m overall and was quite profitable off of a $20m budget.

Now The Boss comes along with numbers that aren’t a dramatic improvement (especially with a 3-day opening) and it’s not summer, but it will be the #2 comedy opening of the year to day and the #1 for and original comedy (vs Ride Along 2) and it’s hard to say that Melissa McCarthy is doing anything other than successfully building a mid-range franchise of lower budget comedies that make money, not too much unlike will Ferrell, with occasional blockbusters (Ghostbusters is coming) to keep it all going. And she’s done this while doing a series… from which she is now free.

As long as McCarthy shows this kind of budget discipline, she will have free reign. And if she ever cracks the international box office nut on her smaller films, she will be a legitimate force on Ferrell’s level as a performer. (I have no idea whether she wants to support other filmmakers as Ferrell and Adam McKay do.)

Batman v Superman had, easily, the worst third Friday of any film opening to over $150 million in history. That’s a dozen titles. The only film in the group which BvS isn’t behind as of that 3rd Friday is Spider-Man 3, which ended up with $337m domestic, but is falling more slowly. I would expect BvS to land somewhere right above or below that number, to become the #1 or #2 worst domestic grosser after a $150m opening.

BvS is about $90m behind Spidey 3 in international right now and should catch up and perhaps pass the total worldwide gross of $891 million. Nothing to sneeze at… but in the game they are playing, at the prices for entry they are spending, quite mediocre.

Zootopia should pass Monsters, Inc and Up this weekend to become one of the top ten all-time animated grossers domestically. And with mighty international sales, it will pass Inside Out‘s worldwide gross in the next few weeks. I would posit that Zootopia is the more under-written-about film in memory. Cute animals and all that… but there is a lot of stuff going on under the hood of this film and as much as I hate overflowing think pieces, this film deserves a bunch more.

Hardcore Henry had a soft opening. I have seen the thing promoted all over the place and I still have no real idea of what it is other than a first-person-shooter gimmick.

If I were Paramount, I’d be going back for more money for 10 Cloverfield Lane, which continues to get shockingly good word of mouth for the performances and screenplay, suggesting that there is surely an adult audience for the film that has not been mined.

Some films with very passionate supporters and detractors slumping into the indie box office this weekend. Demolition will do almost $1 million on 830 screens… which is kinda underwhelming. Jake fans, I would suspect. A hard movie to explain in ads, but not a great start. The Invited has gotten all kinds of indie raves for Karyn Kusama’s “return to form,” but $7500 per on 6 screens is not an indication of this taking off in any real way. And Louder Than Bombs – which features great performances from Jesse Eisenberg, Gabriel Byrne, Isabelle Hupert and newcomer Devin Druid – won’t even do $6k on 4… which is pretty DOA as these things go. That means fewer than 150 people saw the film on each of those 4 screens yesterday. All day. Fewer than 500 likely to each screen over the weekend. More people saw it at Cannes on opening day. I love this film… but the market can be brutal.

Last thought… everyone who mentions blizzards and hurricanes on the east coast affecting box office should measure how drizzle in LA does the same here. I wonder if there is a bump in VOD and streaming sales on exotic L.A. weekends like this. Drizzle. Oy.

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13 Responses to “Friday Estimates by The Klady”

  1. Stella's Boy says:

    The filmmakers might have been happy to have Netflix pick it up for distribution (no idea what they paid for it), but Netflix seems perfect for something like Hush. What a derivative mess. Is the crowd effect in play here, because I have no idea why the response at SXSW was so positive? It’s terrible, from the paper thin lead to the incredibly lame villain to the insanely slow pace to the totally uninspired final showdown. 80 minutes and I was fidgeting the whole time.

    The Invitation, on the other hand, is fantastic. Didn’t think much of Logan Marshall-Green beforehand but he’s excellent. Kusama does a masterful job with the small budget and single location. Very tense and mysterious even though you know shit’s eventually going down. One problem is the presence of John Carroll Lynch. He is a spoiler (and mild spoilers here) basically, like Leland Orser was in the ’90s. Ever since Zodiac if Lynch is in something like this I know bad stuff will happen and he’ll probably be responsible.

  2. PappaShango says:

    Apparently, Midnight Special no longer exists…….

  3. CG says:

    You’re right that there is a lot of smart and interesting stuff going on in Zootopia. That doesn’t just make it a good movie, it means that parents can enjoy it too. Which means parents tell other parents, hey, here’s a kids’ movie that you can actually enjoy as a movie and not just an opportunity for a nap (like, say, Rio 2).

    This is part of why the Snyder DC movies have underperformed at the box office. There’s no kid or family audience. In fact, the conversation around these movies is a strong incentive NOT to take your kid to these movies. While with Marvel, we’ve taken our kid (just turned 8) to Ant-Man, Guardians, and both Avengers. If she were a bit older, we’d plan to take her to Cap 3. Yes, there’s some stuff that’s not quite appropriate in the Marvel movies but it’s generally obliquely done enough that she doesn’t notice.

  4. Movieman says:

    SB- What’s “Hush”?

  5. Stella's Boy says:

    The new Mike Flanagan/Blumhouse movie that premiered on Netflix yesterday.

  6. Movieman says:

    OK, thanks.

  7. Ray Pride says:

    MIDNIGHT SPECIAL #14 on other charts.

  8. Ray Pride says:

    Jason Blum on where Blumhouse pictures wind up : “We see what we have on our hands, and nine times out of ten, we agree with the director, we’re all on the same page, we say “wow we got a wide release movie, we’re gonna go for it,” and if we say that usually we get it. Or, we say ‘we tried to make a wide release movie, it doesn’t really feel like it is, let’s not make someone spend $30 million and have the movie open to $7 million, let’s go to Netflix or iTunes and have a little theatrical or no theatrical,’ and that’s how the process works. Occasionally, the director and us disagree, and it’s a shitshow, it doesn’t happen to0 often.”

  9. Kevin says:

    EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!, my favorite movie of the year so far, should be a hit. I know it’s an indie auteur film with no big stars, but it’s also a huge crowdpleaser.

  10. pat says:

    Zootopia doesn’t need any thinkpieces. The worst thing that you can do to good satire is talk about how satirical it is. Mark Twain knew that. Charlie Chaplin knew that. That’s why they never admitted any subtext to their work.

  11. Bulldog68 says:

    Ditto what Pat said. We analyze the fun out of everything.

  12. Movieman says:

    Yikes.
    “Midnight Special” had a lower PSA this weekend than the second weekend of “Meet the Blacks.” And “MS” was on 514 fewer screens.
    Somebody screwed up.

  13. Christian says:

    Saw “Midnight Special” at 9:40 on Friday night. I know it’s not the prime 7-ish showtime, but I was worried ahead of purchasing my ticket that I might not get a seat.

    By the time I bought a reserved-seat ticket, only two seats in the auditorium were taken, and those customers, along with a few others, didn’t show up until a few minutes before the start time.

    Great movie, though. Shame that it’s not finding an audience.

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