Friday Box Office Analysis
by Tim Briody
March 2, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jack the Giant Slayer towers over the competition, but that's really not saying all that much as it only earns $7.7 million on Friday. Positioned as a tentpole at the start of March (and hoping to get a jump on next weekend's Oz the Great and Powerful), Jack the Giant Slayer unfortunately does bring comparisons to last year's bomb, John Carter, which started with $9.8 million and a $30.1 million weekend. The good news for Warner Bros. is at least Jack the Giant Slayer didn't cost a reported $300 million. Just $190 million. Okay, so maybe that's not that comforting. It will of course, likely do very well overseas (though the same can be true for anything big nowadays) and it will have a pretty decent weekend multiplier due it being the best family choice. Still, $24.8 million for the weekend is incredibly disappointing.
21 and Over
Wild party film 21 and Over was hoping to repeat the performance of Project X, which opened to $20 million on this weekend last year. It won't come close to that as 21 and Over managed just $3.3 million on Friday. I believe, finally, we've stretched the how far "from somebody who has something to do with The Hangover" can take a movie. At least it will have earned back it's production budget by next weekend, but for this weekend it's looking at a total of $9.6 million.
The Last Exorcism Part II
Moving further down the scale of expectations we have The Last Exorcism Part II. While the, uh, first Last Exorcism opened to $20 million, it was because that was made for just $1.8 million that we're getting the sequel. Part II opens with $3.2 million, which sounds rather bad but in terms of performance relative to budget ($5 million this time), it's going be the biggest winner on the weekend. With a weekend of $7.5 million, it'll already be in the black by the end of the weekend, even if it will end up topping out domestically at what the first movie opened to.
Phantom
Phantom, which debuted in 1,118 venues, lived up to its name. It earned only $160,000 yesterday, which means that at best it's looking at a weekend total of $480,000. That's...not good, but it could have been worse as the distributor RCR Media Group was originally estimating that the film would be released into 2,000 locations. The film's stars, Ed Harris, David Duchovny and William Fichtner, are probably wondering why they even bothered.
Notable Holdovers
After returning to the top last weekend, Identity Thief is bumped to fourth by the three newcomers, with $2.7 million, being the first 2013 release to top $100 million in the process. A weekend of $9.2 million seems to be right, with a decent chance at still ending up in second place on the weekend.
Silver Linings Playbook, the only top ten entry to win an Academy Award (Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress), holds exactly steady from last Friday with $1.5 million despite losing a few screens. This isn't too much of a surprise; the film has had minuscule week-to-week drop-offs during awards season, so a 0% week to week decline is its Oscar bump. It's in for a weekend of $5.6 million.
Best Picture Argo lands out of the top ten on Friday but is up 11% from last Friday with another $535,000. The bump was not likely to be extraordinary as the film is already available on DVD but it had an outside shot at reaching the bottom portion of a weak box office chart. It'll add $2 million to its total for the weekend.