Friday Box Office Estimates

The seventh wide opening of the summer, San Andreas, opens to the third best Friday of the 2015 season, behind only Pitch Perfect 2 (still #2 in its third weekend) and Avengers: Age of Ultron, which seems like a hundred years ago already (still #6 this weekend). But how it will hold this weekend and moving forward, that is the question. It has a very strong chance of significantly outperforming PP2 internationally, just as it is unlikely to ever pass PP2 domestically.

Also opening is Aloha, which will be the summer’s weakest wide opening (we’re letting The D Train have a pass, which never went wider than 1009 screens). Just to frustrate film critics, who have lined up against the film both on quality and on political correctness, the film will likely open better than We Bought A Zoo, Cameron Crowe’s last, much better-reviewed film. Maybe casting Emma Stone as Alison Ng paid off.

Friday Box Office Estimates

“Let’s play two,” says Pitch Perfect 2 as Tomorrowland comes out of the blocks slow, hoping that family audiences will power it to a long weekend win, while Poltergeist is going to scare up some business, but nothing quite as shocking as a scary clown. Meanwhile, the much beloved Mad Max: Fury Road continues to do mediocre business, struggling towards $100m domestic, while PP2 passses that landmark today, just nine days into the run.

Friday Box Office Estimates

The drop of Avengers: Age of Ultron from the number everyone was talking about last Saturday, $82 million or so, is 74%. But taking away the Thursday previews from that number, the actual number for Friday was $57.8 million, which makes the Friday-to-Friday drop just 63%. This Friday is $7.8 million off the second Friday gross of the first Avengers and the $85 million weekend estimates currently floated would suggest a Friday-to-weekend ratio of just under 4x Friday, when the history suggests a maximum of 3.5x, making $75m is about the max. And Hot Pursuit was neither hot nor pursued.

Friday Box Office Estimates

Avengers 2. About $2 million more on opening day (with Thursday previews) than the first. $287 million already counted internationally. Likely to be #1 all-time worldwide opening, though until this weekend, there have only been 14 ever taking in over $300 million, the earliest being 2005’s Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Furious 7 just opened to $398 million. No other film is likely to draw more than $7 million domestically this weekend. Searchlight’s 10-screen release of Far From the Madding Crowd should take about $15k per-screen to lead limited releases.