Daily Box Office Analysis
By David Mumpower
August 28, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The Expendables 2 was the number one film in North America for the 11th consecutive day. 2016: Obama’s America finished in second place. What do these two films have in common? No, there isn’t a political punch-line in the offing. Instead, the answer is that they were the only two movies to earn at least a million dollars on Monday. 80% of the top ten finished beneath this mark. In other words, there is conclusive proof that the kids are back in school. Movie theaters are no longer crowded on weekdays as a result.
Before we examine the individual titles tomorrow, let’s appreciate the ebb and flow of summer box office today. While the date seems to get earlier every year, the unofficial start of summer is considered to be the first week of May. We all remember how that turned out. The Avengers opened to $207.4 million. Only eight other releases this year have earned at least this much during their entire domestic run. Still, The Avengers was the only movie earning over a million on Monday, May 7th.
I would offer one other note about the cataclysmic change in the marketplace due to The Avengers. On Thursday, May 3rd, the entire top ten combined for $5,397,176 in revenue. The following Monday, The Avengers alone earned $18,898,999. The entire top ten quadrupled to $22,035,920. That, my friends, is the definition of a juggernaut.
May 14th was the first weekday with two million dollar earners. The other title was Dark Shadows, a general disappointment in terms of box office and quality. Note that Friday is not a weekday for the purposes of box office discussion. It’s included in the weekend category since Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays are the best three days of box office.
Quality depth in the top ten did not occur until the following Monday, May 21st. The debuts of Battleship, The Dictator and What to Expect When You’re Expecting led to five titles earning at least a million each weekday. Technically, Wednesday the 23rd only had four since What to Expect When You’re Expecting was already struggling to maintain popularity, but three out of four days including an entire top five of million dollar titles.
I could cheat and tell you that May 28th included eight million dollar earners. Given that this was Memorial Day, however, that would be a misleading depiction of the day’s events. On Tuesday, May 29th, the number was halved to four and halved again to two on Wednesday, May 29th. Weekday box office had still not reached its summer capacity.
The week of June 4th and June 11th were also a bit thin in terms of depth. Only three movies during the first week of June earned over $1 million per weekday while the number expanded to five movies during the second batch of weekdays. June 18th is when depth became more impressive. Seven titles that week averaged at least a million a weekday. The week of June 25th, the difference was split as six titles fell in that range.
Here is what I find noteworthy about May and June. We have already coincidentally discussed the best and worst weekdays of the month. Those were the Thursday before The Avengers and the Monday after the film debuted. The best weekday in June was the 26th. The top ten accumulated combined domestic revenue of $21,594,899. June 6th was the worst weekday during the month. Earnings on that day were $11,758,739.
What you will notice is that the combined depth of the top on the best June weekday almost compensated for the statistical outlier that inflated the best May weekday. Conversely, the worst June weekday is still double the worst May weekday. This is representative of better quality of the titles in release combined with more free time for consumers to watch the movies they wanted.
July is when the big bucks are earned. The best July weekday was the 3rd. The top ten combined to gross $62,410,071. Yes, this was holiday inflated since a lot of people take the entire week of July 4th as a vacation. If you believe this is an invalid comparison, we also must discard the $42,451,229 earned on July 5th. The next best July weekday would be the 24th with $28,905,436. The worst July weekday was the 19th with “only” $16,068,988.
August is when the money train rolls into the station. The best August weekday in 2012 was the 14th; combined top ten earnings were $17,880,585 on that day. The worst August day was yesterday. The entire top ten combined for a paltry $7,677,243. This is the first time that the ten films could reach a combined $10 million since May 3rd. And thus we have come full circle. We are back to pre-Avengers, pre-summer box office numbers overall.
Even by August standards, yesterday’s box office was quite grim. This is the second lowest box office total for an August weekday over the past four years. The total barely bests the worst weekday of August 31, 2011. On that day, the combined top ten earned $7,490,083. There is a very real chance that Thursday of this week falls far short of that total. In other words, we are going to have one of the worst end of summer box office weeks in recent memory.
This is great news for the people at Rocky Mountain Pictures. Their release, 2016: Obama’s America would ordinarily be a small fish in a big pond. Only seven days prior, $1.2 million would only have been good enough for seventh place behind the modest Disney release, The Odd Life of Timothy Green. On yesterday, that total was good enough to garner further headlines for the controversial documentary.
I will examine the box office behavior of what has become the only noteworthy subject in the top ten tomorrow. For now, what is important is that with the Republican National Convention in full swing this week and no quality releases in the offing, 2016: Obama’s America has a real chance to become the number one film in North America over the next three days.