Friday Estimates by Boo Klady
Not an interesting weekend, all things considered. Lots of soft franchise openings and a failed launch of what could have become a comedy franchise.
Madea is back to her traditional level of business. A little behind, but the details of opening don’t seem to matter to the final domestic number with this franchise. But look for a $53m – $65m gross total, which is what Madea does (with only one outlier… Madea Goes To Jail). Madea has never once done more than $1.3m internationally.
Jack Reacher also returned this weekend, though the Paramount ads were so dark and off-center that I wasn’t quite sure who they were after. The teen boy hard-R audience, perhaps? In any case, they kicked the original opening’s ass by 74%, which is impressive. Still, the domestic launch looks to be around $25 million, which is good, but hardly breathtaking. The expectation, no doubt, is that most of the revenue will be international. And if international also reflects the level of domestic uptick, this movie would do $350 million-plus… which would make it a hot, rising franchise produced at a pretty reasonable budget.
Ouija: Origin of Evil appears to spell “mediocre,” but with cheap production, it’s hard to lose on these bets, Even falling well off the original (original knock-off of a board game, that is), this seems destined to be profitable, if not a new house in London for anyone.
What happened to Keeping Up With The Joneses? Nothing. They just didn’t sell the thing effectively. The movie was better than the ads… which is not a good thing. There is something missing from the formula to keep it from being the comedy Mr & Mrs Smith (perhaps movie stars?), but it’s not lacking entertainment value. If they had sold the third act turn, instead of the jokes that tested biggest, perhaps they would have been better off on opening weekend.
The arthouse is back to life. Moonlight is killing it for A24 with $32,500 per screen on Friday and over $60k per screen for the weekend. The Handmaiden did $4750 per screen on four and will be over $10k for the weekend. And Trumpland, the last-minute Michael Moore concert film (now available on iTunes) did a handsome $5,300 per on two on Friday.
Hope Tyler Perry and others celebrate the successful return of Madea by visiting a local Chipotle in costume on Halloween and getting a burrito for only $3. It is crazy to think that TP has been wearing the dress on screen for over 12 years and is still drawing a crowd. I know placement at the weekend domestic box office is irrelevant but Madea was in Lionsgate’s first number one movie and she’s still on top.
For all the shared universes that have been pitched I think lionsgate is missing an oppurtunity with Madea meets Saw. I know it would be the only way I would get near either franchise.
And the bump for reacher is not out of nowhere, the finest one dropped in December which always suppresses opening weekends a bit, I don’t expect this one to do more than 15% over the firsts domestic total especially considering the reviews.
Given that BOO! MADEA!! is the result of a throwaway Chris Rock jock in TOP FIVE, I wouldn’t dismiss that possibility if Perry ever decides to stop moralizing and sleaze it up like he does when he’s in front of the camera in movies he doesn’t direct.
Btw, Perry will reclaim his crown as the top grossing African American director, from Tim Story, with this one.
“Btw, Perry will reclaim his crown as the top grossing African American director, from Tim Story, with this one.”
Just curious Et, where is a stat like that available? And I would have thought that Antoine Fuqua or John Singleton might have that designation…they have both directed their share of hits.
Does Chris Rock get a cut of this movie? I swear Tyler got the idea from his trailer in Top Five. When I saw it I thought it was a great idea.
Man, I saw Top Five and loved it but I can’t remember a Medea joke to save my life.
Keeping up w/the Jones’ trailer made it seem like a very predictable movie. About at bad as Central Intelligence. I hate trailers that show too much or give away the entire plot line. What Lies Beneath for years I thought was the worst about it. Like, seriously, can you not tell that’s the entire film right there? That deserves to fail to stop your stupidity in mktg. Then about a decade later, Never Let Me Go decides to shows the actual friggin’ climax of the film in the trailer! You people who thought, or failed to think this through, go to a world where this is a good business decision and live there. You don’t belong on planet earth. Innocent people shouldn’t suffer your denseness.
“They linin up around the block for that Madea Halloween movie!”And thus, a hit was conceived.
@Geoff, you have to go to Mojo’s “People” list and do a quick scroll-through. Perry out-grosses Fuqua by about $130 million at the moment, and Singleton by quite a bit. In terms of non-white directors overall, Shylaman still has the title over Wan, Lin, Saldahna etc….14 years and running I believe.
Wow, thanks for point that list out.
Did you know the highest grossing female directors are…Lilly and Lana Wachowski? Fascinating.
^ Does that come with an asterisk for when they were brothers?
(All 3 Matrix movies were before the transition.)
Pete, they were always women, because that’s how it works. That’s a fascinating stat though.
Cool statwork Et, I just checked it out myself on Box Office Mojo – but you know who could leapfrog right past Tyler Perry next year? F. Gary Gray if Furious 8 does near the business that the first one did.