Friday Estimates by Klady Legacy

There have been twelve $40 million openings in December, ever. Only seven $50 million openings. Tron Legacy will be one of those. Once again, whether people want to crap all over MT Carney or not… and many do… but she/her team/whomever you want to credit has/have now opened two Disney movies in a row about as well as possible. You want to talk about the price tag on the marketing campaigns, fine. You want to talk about the price of the movies, fine. But opening a movie and making a movie are two very different activities with two very different sets of goals and the first part, opening Tangled and Tron Legacy domestically have gone well.

No film opening to over $40 million in December has ever grossed less than $200m domestic. A simple fact. And what is also interesting is that the next plateau, a $50m+ opening in December, has not historically meant much more than $40m. There are $50m+ Dec openings with $209m grosses and there are $40m – $50m Dec openers with over $300m in domestic.

Yogi Bear looks like a $14m – $15m starter, no Chipmunk he. $100m domestic is still possible, but a bit of a longshot. Time will tell. Word of mouth will mean a lot and with only Gulliver’s Travels, which looks horrible in the ads, coming in as kid fodder in opposition, Yogi could end up as default choice. If I were Disney, I’d be relaunching Tangled… or even Toy Story 3 in a hurry. Hungry marketplace for family films and the cupboard is bare (or is that “bear?”). Tron is not going to get 8-year-olds, sorry.

The Fighter opened about where I would have guessed. $10 – $11.5m is completely respectable… and not a world beater.

Narnia is crashing. The Tourist is at baggage claim, waiting on its luggage. And Potter 7 is #3 in the series after the end of the fifth Friday. Hard to project the international biz to the end, but the $1b dream for the film doesn’t look in any way sure right now. Completely solid Potter showing, but not an accelerant.

How Do You Know is a car wreck… and that’s above and beyond the sad limp thing that the movie is. Why does a 70-year-old man make a movie about romance amongst 30somethings? I don’t know. Maybe it was Garry Marshall’s fault, having a big hit with a new version of Love American Style. Jim Brooks is one of the best ever. His last two films are destroying that legacy. Time to write novels or something.

And Black Swan can’t be thrilled with 10x the screens and 2.5x the box office. But it’s still pretty strong. Still $7000 – $8000k per screen over the weekend. The question remains, will Swan get the big hit off of Oscar nominations, like Slumdog, or not? If not, it may be going out a little slow. If so, it may be going out a little fast. Searchlight is trying to manage this issue and have very little history to work with, as most films in this position have gone one way or the other, for better and for worse…

Weekend Estimates by Chronic Klady

So… The Narnia opening still sucks, the Tourist opening is bad, considering that you have to go back to From Hell to find an opening as weak for Depp (Sweeney Todd opened to less, but on less than half the screens) and even for Jolie, you’re kinda looking at Alexander as a comparable start, taking size into account. Yes, it will do business overseas and they may find a way to not lose a ton… or they may lose a ton. We’ll see in time.

Tangled has now past the past two Disney Animation Thanksgiving releases. Mulan goes down this week, then Pocahontas and Lilo & Stitch. Tarzan‘s $171m is far away, but not impossible. It really depends on how much of the under-12 market Yogi Bear eats through the holiday.

Strong numbers for Black Swan, The Fighter, and The King’s Speech, pretty much in that order. Someone wrote me to ask whether I thought something new was happening with these big per-screens and whether it had anything to do with digital projection. No and no. Interlocking projectors to show a movie on addition screens at a theater to meet need is a decades old occurrence. But The Fighter, for instance, is currently playing on four screens at the Arclight Hollywood, including the Cinerama Dome, 2 screens at Lincoln Square in NY, 3 screens at Boston Common, and I can’t find a fourth theater or city. Maybe they are counting The Dome as a fourth house. (ADD, 1:53p Reader Rob writes, “The fourth location for The Fighter is Showcase Cinemas in Lowell, Mass.”) Black Swan is, for instance, in 3 theaters at various venues in NYC.

This launch for The Fighter is almost identical to The King’s Speech‘s launch a couple of weeks ago. But there are very different strategies to follow, with The King’s Speech waiting on awards, still in 19 venues on this, its third weekend and Fighter going to at least 2200 screens next weekend. Fighter will be looking for a weekend of at least $17 million before duking it out in the rich holiday period. You kinda get the feeling that this weekend’s 4-screen release was only a hat tip to the many critics groups voting this week, comforting them in their possible votes while asking them to embrace True Grit, for instance, is still asking them to embrace a commercial unknown.

The Black Swan numbers are stronger than Brokeback Mountain‘s, though that seems to be the best box office comparison so far. In an interview with the WSJ, Searchlight said that they would be going to 1000 screens on the 22nd. Interesting. I would probably try to push that to next weekend, avoiding True Grit… but then again, The Fighter may be stronger commercially, at least at first. I just think they can probably beat The Fighter on half the screens… and can probably do the same against True Grit. So why not maximize the season?

It’s a good problem for Steve Gilula to have… how to maximize a hit that they weren’t 100% sure was such a hit outside of the arthouse world.

No such problem for Disney and The Tempest.

Friday Estimates by Klady

So now The Fighter is out in exclusive release to take on Black Swan. A strong start… but not really Swannie.

Fighter did $25k per screen on 4 yesterday, heading to what will most likely be about $75k per screen for the weekend on 4. As a matter of fact, this is almost exactly the I Heart Huckabees number. I expect Fighter to do a multiple of what Huckabees did ($12.8m domestic), but it is a striking stat. More directly, the Fighter launch is about 15% better than 127 Hours, which also started on 4 screens a month and 5 days ago. 127 has been in a bit of a holding pattern, perhaps waiting for some critics awards love. But they may have overstayed their box office welcome, expanding but still dropping slightly last weekend.

On the other webbed hand, Black Swan did $80k per screen on 18 screens last weekend. So what does Searchlight do with such a buzzy movie? Well, they jumped to 90 screens this weekend, 5x last weekend, and the results are still quite strong. Per-screen yesterday was about $11k per, projecting to $33k or so on 90 screens. Historically, there isn’t a lot to compare it to because it’s a lingering number of screens, which is not usually where films with these kinds of numbers hang out. Juno was not as strong, doing a similar per-screen on half the screens on “this weekend” in 2007. Precious was stronger, registering a similar per-screen on twice as many screens on its second weekend. And Slumdog Millionaire did about half-the per-screen on a 78-theater count in the first week of December two years ago.

So which will Swannie be? Precious, which never really played well after it got past 600 screens? Or a $140m-plus hit like Juno or Slumdog, which expanded to 100 and 600 screens, respectively, by the New Year and had $50m and $30m in the bank before Oscar ballots started getting sent in right after the holiday? Or will it be somewhere in between the two?

I am also put in mind of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a movie that wasn’t supposed to be able to play in Middle America and triumphantly did, but didn’t really ever trend down at all until it hit $80 million… and then, with Oscar’s help, took another $50 million into the domestic box office. Of course that year, a decade ago now, was one of the great Oscar seasons of modern times, with Soderbergh dueling against himself with two great films, a foreign language nominee, an epic, and a Harvey Weinstein bon bon. There were so many stories inside of that group of films that The Academy defaulted to “The Big One.” Not a shock, really. I’d say that it happened again – though I love this film and only like Gladiator – with The Departed a few years ago. Too many interesting choices often lead to The Big One.

But there is no Big One this year. The odds of either Toy Story 3 or Inception, both likely nominees, winning Best Picture are infinitesimal. Out of the rest of the pack, The Social Network is the commercial muscle right now with $91 million. Will one of these other films, from King’s Speech to Fighter to Swannie, challenge that number? If so, that is when the phenomenology that won Best Picture for Slumdog kicks in. If not, we’re still looking for the turn that the season will take.

After the first day of Potter 7’s fourth weekend, the film is now behind 2 previous Potter films day-by-day and it delivered the lowest-grossing fourth Friday of the series. Front loading’s a bitch. (No offense, ma’am.) There is nothing bad to report here. It’s going to do a “Harry Potter number” and will be the 6th in the series to gross over $800m worldwide, the 27th film in history to do so. Think of that… 27 total and Potter represents 6 of them. Amazing.

Walden and Fox can’t be happy with Narnia 3’s launch… less than half of what either of the first two films opened at. Even if it gets stronger over the weekend and cracks $30m, it’s way off of either of the first two films… and people saw #2 as a major disappointment.

And Sony, oddly, can’t be too unhappy about The Tourist, given that they’ve treated the film like an ugly stepchild the whole way… because it’s massively disappointing, given the stars. Knight & Day opened to almost the same Friday number, but Fox, which believed in that film, had already siphoned off $7 million with a Wednesday opening. The two films should have a very similar 3-day start, though with the head start and a better film, K&D should outgross The Tourist domestically by $15 million or more (perhaps $20 million more). But as with K&D, with these stars, even with a flop here, the money is overseas. Cruise and Diaz did $185m overseas. And while I expect Tourist to also scale down from that overseas, they could end up with $100m+ international to bolster the bottom line of a weak domestic run.

Weekend Estimates by Holdover Klady

Not much to say about the weekend, except that the today’s estimates vs the friday estimates are oddly robust. It’s not surprising with the kids films, but 3 of the next few titles that are not kids films are estimating over 3x Friday for the weekend. Hmmm… should make tomorrow’s “finals” interesting.

The story of the weekend is – for a change, reasonably – an “exclusive” launch. I am not a believer in getting too excited about 2-4 screens in LA or NY as representative of anything much, aside from NY and LA’s hardcore art house crowd being served. But 18 screens… that’s beginning to be a real toe in the water. Black Swan‘s opening is clearly the strongest not-wide opening of the year.

Here is a list, via Mojo, of the best per-screen weekends in domestic history for 10-20 non-IMAX screens. 10 of these 15 titles were Oscar nominees and 2 won Best Picture. You might also notice that except for the films that did half or less of what Black Swan is estimated to have done this weekend, the box office low is Precious, with $47.6m domestic and 7 of the 9 films in this elite group have grossed over $80m. (Note: Dances With Wolves is listed twice because this is all weekends, not just opening weekends, because I didn’t want to limit this list to any more of the vagaries of release plans than need be.)

Friday Estimates by Klady

Beware the first weekend of December… oooohhh… scary!!!

It’s one of those weekends that is seen as a dead zone, though there hasn’t been enough serious experimentation by distributors in the last decade or so to really prove anything. Unless you want to the weekends that start on Dec 7-8-9 as “first weekend,” the best opening on the first weekend in December history is The Last Samurai with $24.3 million on Dec 5, ending up with 4.6x opening, all domestic. If you do want to count 7-8-9, tops is Narnia: Lion, Witch, Wardrobe with a $65.6m start, followed by Ocean’s Eleven with $38.1m, and Golden Compass‘ $25.8m, and then you get to Samurai again.

The widest new release this weekend is Relativity Media/Rogue’s The Warrior’s Way on 1622 screens and with little commercial firepower.

I think we have learned that with the right bait, every weekend of the year is a good box office weekend.

The big fri-to-fri drops look ugly, but it’s worth noting that even though they are worse than we’ve seen in the last couple of years in this slot, November Potters Sorcerer’s Stone and Goblet of Fire had similar drops in their years. Tangled might be a little more nervous, with this being only their second weekend. Disney took the film out on Thanksgiving weekend instead of the weekend before and it may cost them some dollars. Still, the film will be about $10m ahead of their last Thanksgiving animated release, Bolt, after the post-Thanksgiving weekend.

This is Disney Animation’s biggest hit in a long time. Ironically, the group is begging off of fairy tales… which is, in my opinion, just stupid. It’s not the genre, it’s the execution. And when people use Transformers and Iron Man as the example of what kids want, they conveniently forget the parade of other films very closely aligned with that style of film that have bombed.

What’s INSANE is the idea that Tangled cost $260 million or more. It just can’t make money with that kind of budget. If that is really the number before marketing, you’re looking at about $400 million worldwide to make up before you’re at breakeven, which means that it would lose money doing Iron Man business and only make a minor profit if grossing what Transformers grossed.

Black Swan is looking at the best exclusive release numbers of 2010 with what looks to be an over $70k per screen for the weekend in 14 screens. The number is very similar to the launch of Up In The Air last year… the biggest difference being that $84m domestic was a bit of a disappointment for the Clooney movie and would be an epic success for this low budget psycho thriller. (Headline suggestion for indieWIRE…. “Psycho Thriller, Qu’est-ce que c’est!!!”) When you look at this month, Black Swan could be the Juno of the season for Searchlight, meaning that it could become the must-see movie for girls in a market that is light of fare for them.

Box Office Hell, Tangled vs Potter

Weekend Estimates by Klady 7

I don’t know that there is anything much more to say about the full 3-day or 5-day than has already been said.

The King’s Speech did great numbers for The Weinsteins on 4 screens… not too much of a surprise and neither will their Oscar nomination be a surprise to anyone. What will be most interesting is whether critics groups support the performances in the film or if they look to others who are less obvious candidates to be celebrated.

127 Hours continues to be less commercial than I expected, even on 293 screens. It’s rolling out faster than Slumdog or Wrestler, but to smaller numbers. Searchlight had a bit of a problem with too much strong product, with Black Swan starting its roll out next weekend. Add King’s Speech to the mix – which serves a narrower audience than the other two films – and you have a lot of jostling for position with three films that should be successful and Oscar nominated. Challenging.

Last year, there was nothing like this group until Dec 18, with The Young Victoria, Nine, and Crazy Heart. The year before, on the first weekend of Dec, it was Frost/Nixon debuting and Slumdog Millionaire and MIlk still under 100 screens. Of the six titles I just mentioned, 3 never got past $20m and only 1 ever got past $40m. The economics of Oscar 2010.

Friday Estimates by Hairy Klady

As of yesterday, Potter 7 was still behind Hp6, day for 9 days… but that will change today, when HP7 will become the biggest Potter ever… for at least a few days. But I am just repeating myself.

Tangled is the best opening for a non-Pixar Disney animated film ever… though the rules of box office have changed rather dramatically since Disney was in the mega-hit animation business. But the last two Thanksgivings, Disney has been under Lasseter and the results were Bolt, even launching the Friday before Thanksgiving, doing just $66.8 by the end of Thanksgiving weekend (a 10-day) and The Princess & The Frog shoved to a wide opening on Dec 11 to give room to A Christmas Carol and opening to a $24.2m 3-day on a non-holiday. The domestic result, $114m and $104m. Tangled should be at around $80m on the 5-day opening… aka A DreamWorks Animation kinda number. DWA has stuck to that first weekend in November strategy, but $46m in a non-holiday 3-day for Megamind and $63m for Madagascar 2 feels analogous to the $60something holiday 3-day for Tangled.

In any case, some will say that MT Carney bought an opening… but that’s kinda missing the point. Credit where credit is due. “Best Disney Animated Opening Ever” may be a somewhat specious claim, but she opened the movie to numbers that should get it somewhere around the $200m mark, which Disney hasn’t seen in Burbank animation since the heyday of Aladdin and The Lion King. Yeah, this $217m ain’t Aladdin‘s $217 million. And for me, the last two films were both better than this one. But ring one up for MT. Next, a much bigger challenge in Tron Legacy, which is fortunate that Narnia seems to be the only real competition for families with kids over 8, as Yogi Bear and Gulliver’s Travel are rumbled to be car wrecks. ( I think Yogi will do well with the little ones, but can’t imagine what teen will be dragged in to see it and wonder how many of us who are nostalgic about Yogi see the spirit of the original in the ads and not just a CG 3D mess.)

I noted that Fox saw Burlesque coming to thin their audience for Love & Other Drugs. Why didn’t they move? Because they saw it coming in tracking, aka too late. I think Love will hold well. And it looks like Burlesque is working better than I expected this weekend and may have campy legs longer than I would have imagined. Those who love it, love it.

Someone sent some trash in The Rock’s direction in the earlier b.o. thread. Well, it’s all about scoreboard for me. I don’t care what we think of him and his films. I don’t think I have seen one in a theater since The Rundown and a couple of the cameos. But he is an opener until he’s not an opener. He’s out-opening Russell Crowe, Harrison Ford, and Sean Penn. Some may say that’s not a big deal. And each actor carries specific baggage. The Rock will be right behind J-Lo’s ass as the #2 opener for CBS Films so far. It’s not a great day for the new studio or for The Rock… but it’s not a career landmark either… not at this point.

The King’s Speech is opening in fine indie fashion, looking like Brokeback Mountain and There Will Be Blood… but with a lot less money being spent by The Weinsteins than was spent by those distributors at this point. (It’s also comparable to Dreamgirls and Memoirs of a Geisha… to be fair. But TKS carries none of the baggage – black or bad – that those two did.) This one could easily be The Weinstein Co’s third biggest domestic hit, behind only Inglorious Basterds and Scary Movie 4.

Box Office Peek

It occurred to me… how is Harry Potter 7 really doing, now that we are a week in?

The answer, of course, is great. Big consistent series. However, the excitement around the massive Friday number last week? It does seem to be falling back into the Potter pack. The gross for HP7 has been behind HP6, on a daily basis, since Day 3 and remains so after Thanksgiving Thursday. HP7 will probably push ahead over the rest of the holiday weekend, as HP6 opened on a Wednesday in summer, meaning days 8-10 were Wed, Thurs, Fri. Regardless, Potter 6, which was way out ahead of the previous films going into the second weekend, scored the weakest 2nd weekend in the franchise’s history. Second worst 3rd weekend… worst 4th, 5th, and 6th. By then, you’re looking at weekend under $3m… not big scoreboard changers.

The point is, front-loading is getting greater for the series. No reason, yet, to think that 7 will be exceptionally big.

I am amused by the spin on Burlesque, which would have to do unusual numbers indeed to get to Sony’s $17.8m prayer. Rent started with $2.3m more over the first two days (if you buy Sony’s Thursday estimate, which is likely high) and ended up with $17.1m for the 5-day and $29m total domestic. Perhaps that drop-off is more extreme than Burlesque will experience, but $16m seems like a more realistic 5-day goal and $40m domestic does seem to be about the max we could see from this title.

Fox kind of expected to split the Love & Other Drugs weekend with Burlesque, in terms of the core audience for these film, women. And that’s where it seems to be going. It will be interesting to see if the less showy romantic melodramedy will catch up with Cher’s narrow lead before the five days is over… and where the legs are.

Faster is a career-worst start for The Rock. Perhaps even the great Terry Press – and I mean it, she is great – can’t turn the CBS Films train around. Perhaps The Movie Gods have just decided that Sumner Redstone allowing his two sides of Viacom compete directly as though they were random strangers is just stupid and self-destructive. If you can’t open a violent Rock movie to much more than Summit opened a star-free Never Back Down to -and really, Faster will open to less without the 5-day advantage – something is wrong. This ain’t Harrison Ford in a surgical gown looking as confused as the audience. This is The Rock Kicks Ass. Come on.

Hard to be sure where Tangled is going, but at the least, it looks like the best non-Pixar Disney animation opening in many years.

Weekend Magic Estimates by Klady

No real surprises on Potter. The same question I posed yesterday will linger as we go through the next few weeks… how much of the domestic audience showed up for the opening 24 hours and will the domestic total be in significant way larger than the rest of the series?

It’d actually a shame that C. Nikki Finke disappears her earlier content, even if incorrect, because as the unfiltered mouthpiece for many studios, she tells us all what they really were thinking, in this case on Friday afternoon. I don’t mind Nikki’s spin today that this is what WB was after because, in a sane world, it is. These numbers are right on target and probably a little more frontloaded than in past, as happens with most franchises these days. It may end up being the biggest Potter and then topped by the final finale, but low-mid 300s and possibly breaking the tape on $1 billion worldwide is not out of line with the rest of the franchise, one of the greatest of all time without having to see a $145m opening, for instance.

And I am impressed with Fandango’s press release that they sold 17% or about $21 million worth of tickets to Potter this weekend. We forget when talking about the 3D bump that a significant percentage of people are willing to pay a pre-sale bump of 10% or more.

The drops, as expected, flattened out as Potter did over the weekend, still carrying what I guesstimate to be an extra 5% or more from the Friday onslaught, meaning I think that #2, #3, and #4 would have all dropped nicely in the 30s if it weren’t for the elephant in the room on Friday.

The Next Three Days would still probably have come up short of $10m with the campaign it had and without Mr Potter it its way. LGF was probably after counterprogramming, but adults had little interest in going to the theaters with hordes of Potterites on Friday and were likely wary on Saturday too.

127 Hours‘ expansion was good, but not as good as the movie. And Made in Dagenham showed some potential with a nice 3 screen weekend.

Friday Estimates by Harry Klady

So Klady is $600,000 lower than most estimates. It’s a bit more interesting that WB told Nikki to estimate $4 million over what everyone else has this morning. No doubt that number will disappear. But it speaks to the odd nature of numbers like these. Massive MIdnights, mega-Friday… but still, 8% less than the studio thought at 9p last night. This, Harry Potter’s best launch, may lead to his best gross… or maybe it’s just all the more frontloaded. No way to know until we get down the road a bit. Regardless, another giant Potter, even without 3D. Good for WB.

The Potter Effect is pretty clear on the chart. When 48% is your strong hold for the wide releases on your Top Ten, you can’t really put that on the movies. Actually, I would say that the Unstoppable hold is quite strong in the face of Potter, but it will be clearer as the weekend progresses. The film faces new films between now and Tron Legacy, but every one of them skews either young, or more so, female, unless The Tourist turns out to be tougher than it looks from here. So they could play strong into mid-December.

Megamind hist $100m today. It’s DWA’s 9th such film with Paramount, where they have never missed the $100m domestic mark together. The animation side of DW had 4 $100m domestic hits before Paramount… and 5 under $100m. You has to give Paramount a lot of credit for the growth of DWA, though Katzenberg has also, clearly, found a template that works, even if they are still not doing PIxar numbers. Given all the excellent marketers around town who have not proven that they can be as consistently successful in animation as the DWA/Paramount combo, one wonders whether leaving is in DWA’s best interest, whatever the feelings between the two management teams.

The Next Three Days smelled of flop in the marketing, or lack thereof. And so it came to pass.

Weekend Estimates by MegaUnstoppbale Klady

Not sure if there’s much to add to the Friday conversation…

Friday Estimates by Unstoppable Klady

I guess the November opening comparison that Fox would like for Unstoppable is Mrs. Doubtfire, which opened to $20.5m domestic and ended up at $220 million. Not likely. However, easy to imagine this weekend ending up as high at $25m – which would be Denzel’s 4th highest opening with 15 $15m+ openings – and like the train in the movie, speeding up. That may mean low-teen drops. $131 million would be Denzel’s top domestic gross… and that might be doable with this film, exactly because people who haven’t seen the film and are reading this and all the other raves and saying, “Seriously? A movie about a train going fast? I have to see that?” But the word of mouth should be pretty consistent… it’s a great ride… a movie movie… calorie content through the roof, nutritional value almost nothing… it’s the Cap’n Crunch w/ Crunch Berries & Chocolate Sauce of movies.

Skyline proves that you can blow up some of the people, some of the time, but not all of the people, all of the time. Still, $11.5 million is less disastrous than some might have expected. (It’s also less than many predicted.)

Morning Glory will be fortunate to open to Leap Year numbers. It’s hard to be sure just where Paramount went wrong on this one, but here are a few guesses. 1. Horrible Outdoor. “What’s the story, Morning Glory” is cute, but if you’re going there, you need to do the TV spots with the song from Bye, Bye Birdie and make something out of the phrase. Catchy is not enough. It was memorable, but told us nothing about the movie, except who was in it. 2. The Story Kept Changing In The Materials. What is it? Gruff Older Talent vs Up-N-Comer or classic rom-com? Pick! 3. The Movie Couldn’t Decide Either. As I wrote in my review, I think Diane Keaton confused the issue, having nothing to do with her talent or star power. She is a major actor in a minor role and I think that both overshadowed the core of the film, McAdams + Ford, and also felt unclear in the marketing.

Or maybe it was something else…

Red is having its first normal drop… but will still flirt with $80m by the end of the weekend and will be Summit’s #1 non-Twilight film, if not on Sunday, before mid-week.

Friday Estimates saw Klady

22. 20. 11.

aka The Last Three Fridays.

A cult series from which new content is rare, now in 3D, which seemed to fit. A sequel to a film that felt like an exciting discovery to audiences. And a dead franchise making a run at resurrection via 3D.

You can’t really blame Lionsgate marketing or any LGF management – though a frustrated Carl Icahn will – for this uninspired opening. The franchise was clearly body-bagged last year, with Saw VI managing about half, domestically, what any of the previous five Saws had done before. The fall-off was less severe overseas, but it was still the lowest international grosser of the series.

Did 3D matter? Yes. The first day was up about 50% from the last Saw. But still, both opening days for 6 & 7 are lower than any of the previous four sequels. 3D is not a savior. And film by film, everyone is figuring that out.

57% is a pretty good Friday-to-Friday hold – welcome to post-millennial box office – for Paranormal Activity 2. It’s hard to compare to the first film, since that one opened tiny and never ended up in as many theaters as this one opened in. But after a $20 million midnight/opening day launch, I think 57% off – which will make for a lower weekend drop – is solid.

Hereafter‘s 50% Friday-to-Friday drop is less encouraging.

Red‘s 25% drop is strong, leading a parade of 20somethings: Secretariat, the shocking Life As We Know It, and The Town.

The big limited opening is The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, which is opening better than the 100+ expansion of Dragon Tattoo, but not as strong as the mid-summer launch of Played With Fire.

Weekend Estimates by Klady – Incept2

The only comparable non-animated summer hold to Inception‘s second weekend – even if the studio percentage ends up being 2 or 4 or4 percent off – is The Hangover. (Hangover had a better hold, but off a smaller opening… which balances out.) Clearly, a lot of people were convinced that if they wanted to go see a summer blockbuster this weekend, seeing the new Angelina was not as important to them as seeing Nolan’s much talked about film.
I still think there has been a pretty strong overstatement in the press about how this film is doing. And that is, no doubt, self-fulfilling. It doesn’t hurt that, like Avatar, Titanic, and others, there is not much else in the marketplace that can be recommended by word of mouth. There is, no doubt, a you-have-to-see-it-and-decide-for-yourself element.
Regardless, a very strong hold, a very good movie, and a happy story for people who want something out of the summer that isn’t completely brain dead entertainment.
Meanwhile, Jolie’s Salt opening was well off of her Wanted opening… and that was the target for Sony to hit, no? Still, a solid opening.
Perspective counts, of course. Salt is a much cheaper movie than Robin Hood and Sony is not in flux. Yet, when Robin Hood did the same number… and what is likely to be a significantly bigger number worldwide… the word “bomb” was being thrown around. In the end, the bottom lines on these two movies will look pretty similar, unless Salt ends up being unusually leggy.
Just sayin’…
Sony is definitely seeing dividends by having the only real non-animated comedy in the marketplace since it opened, Grown Ups. Dinner For Schmucks has a real opportunity on that score and it will be interesting to see how that film affects Sandler’s. It seems like every year that the summer isn’t overloaded with comedies, the studios forget to do very many at all… and then you get a pile-up like Schmucks and The Other Guys opening back-to-back. With Get Him To The Greek, that makes only 4 straight comedies all summer long… and all four are from franchisers Sandler, Farrell, or Apatow. (Carrell has his feet in both Farrell and Apatow worlds… though perhaps Schmucks lands under Roach’s jurisdiction.)
Focus has an interesting road ahead with The Kids Are All Right. The biggest grosser not to hit 1000 screens in the US this year is Summit’s The Ghost Writer, which had its only $2m weekend with 819 screens. Kids outdid their high this weekend on just 201 screens. The trick to get to and surpass Ghost’s domestic total of $15.5m is getting another big jump out of Kids when it does leap to 800 screens next weekend. A $5 million weekend next weekend and you’re looking at (500) Days of Summer numbers, or better. If the film plateaus on expansion, say $3.5 million, and you start thinking maybe the low 20s. If it stays at $2.6m or drops, the audience has been well mined and high teens starts to look good. This is a film, regardless of your politics or personal feelings about the film, which should be rooted for every bit as much as Inception, in terms of it being a personal piece that is being given a real shot by Focus based on great performances and a respect for adult audiences.