Friday Estimates by Tomb Panther Klady
Tomb Raider takes the top slot. Will it hold through Saturday, where Black Panther has been extraordinarily muscular?
Panther will pass $600 million domestic this weekend, whichever slot it lands in. Tomb Raider is on course for $85 – $100 million domestic and will rely on international to make it a financial hit or failure, regardless of whether it is the #1 movie in America this weekend. (I am on record saying that Tomb Raider will get a sequel either way… and it should. Hard to open, but a movie franchise with a lot of potential with a very human female lead. It’s an imperfect movie with strong bone structure.)
The surprise of the weekend is I Can Only Imagine, based on an inspirational Christian song, rolled out by Roadside for Lionsgate, and on its first day outgrossed any opening 3-day weekend in Roadside history. Last year, Lionsgate released Christian entry The Shack to $16.2 million. Imagine‘s opening day is 13% better, leading to the projection of an opening 3-day of $18.1 million… which would be the seventh highest open in this niche, on just 1629 screens, which is less than half the count of any of the films ranked #1-#5 and well being #6 (3048 screens).
Roadside’s highest grosser is Manchester By The Sea at $48 million domestic. I Can Only Imagine is likely to top that.
Love, Simon – or at least the pitch – seems anachronistic in the year after Call My By Your Name and even the return of “Will & Grace.” But I am told that I am being too much of a sheltered straight guy and that the world needed a basic rom-com.
A Wrinkle in Time has a modest Friday 2 drop… but no recovery in sight.
Peter Rabbit will pass $100 million this weekend. Red Sparrow will check out with less than Game Night. (Ouch)
And in the per-screen fight, The Orchard’s Zoey Deutch-starrer, Flower, smashes the $10k per barrier and will be somewhere around $25k per on 3.
Wasn’t that the problem with the second Jolie Tomb Raider? It was a sequel nobody wanted to a film they didn’t particularly like?
I was fine with the reboot but frankly I enjoyed playing the game more than I enjoyed watching the film. Not much interest in a continuation.
The first Tomb Raider movie was sort a thing that Summer. The sequel, was unnecessary for various reasons, and it a totally different movie than the first. This is something people don’t really like to happen, but studios do it anyway.
Here’s to Warners figuring out a way to get Tomb Raider (2018) in front of some eyeballs, over the next couple of years. If they just leave it on HBO for a year and half, that’s not going to help. If they want to make it a thing. They need that thing to pop up on Netflix, but next January at the latest.
Outside of that, here’s hoping Black Panther gets it’s fifth week in a row.
If Tomb Raider opens to $25m, getting to $85m will be a tough proposition with Pacific Rim and Ready Player One providing action competition. I haven’t seen any indicators that the audience is so in love with this Lara Croft that they will provide It legs of that nature. It’ll be extremely lucky to do 3 times it’s Opening Weekend gross so $75m is the absolute ceiling in my book, and that’s being generous.
Tomb Raider looks so incredibly boring. There’s not a single wow moment in the trailer. Nothing stands out save for how totally routine and dull it looks. I love Boyd Crowder but that has limits.
I only first heard about the Jesus movie a few days ago. So this is Dennis Quaid’s beat now? Jesus and inspirational family movies. I guess people have to work.
My 10-year-old loved A Wrinkle in Time. He was glued and into it for every minute. He cheered and laughed and had a total blast. So it seems to really work for younger viewers and I’m so glad we went. I love watching him love a movie and I’m grateful it exists. I thought it was fine. There are some clunky moments and it doesn’t really have a killer set piece. But overall it kept my interest. I liked the kids. Oh and the Ready Player One trailer blew my kid’s mind. He shouted when does that start when it was over.
I felt that rebooting Tomb Raider was a mistake too. And though I love Vikander, I thought she was a mistake.
Having seen it, I think that the director failed to get the big set pieces to work as well as they were conceived, but that Vikander and her tiny physique bring an energy to the idea that works better than the film does.
I wish they hired a stronger visual director. He does chases on foot well, but doesn’t know how to do his version of Spielberg well enough.
So, who wants to talk about how good “The Death of Stalin” is? Here’s hoping it expands robustly. The director was in D.C. for opening-night Q&As, so that’ll help.
As soon as distribution makes STALIN available I’m there. Dying to see it.
The Death of Stalin is a good movie, but a terrible comedy. It also has some wildly uneven performances like Jason Issac. Who is apparently playing a character from a 70s Western. Instead of a general, that helped to overturn the horrors of Stalin. It is definitely worth seeing, for Steve Buscemi alone. He is absolutely incredible in it.
Vikander isn’t small. She’s an athletic 5’5″. Women that height should be in more action movies. I’d imagine that without the DD padded bra that Angelina wore in the same role, that she and Vikander are built the same.
No terrible comedy could make me laugh as often as I did during the first half of STALIN, although the comedy, and the film, drop off some before recovering nicely for the finale. I suspect I’ll be rewatching this one over the years.
Oh. The whole beginning is wonderful, and has the whimsy Iannucci does with easy. It just takes a hard damn swerve, and it’s a really crazy juxtaposition. All the stuff dude is being charged with… it’s so harsh. Again, really good and interesting movie, and it is a comic book movie. Bazinga!
“I’d imagine that without the DD padded bra that Angelina wore in the same role, that she and Vikander are built the same.”
You can do the research on the internet if you haven’t seen too many movies with them. For science.
The remake is a solid B movie. Vikander is overqualified, but that’s a positive for the audience.
Right about now, Black Panther is looking pretty good for the domestic #3 all-time slot. Can’t believe I’m saying this about a movie that opened in February.