Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
February 21, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
After breaking the February opening weekend record, Fifty Shades of Grey takes a 65% hit from last Friday but still stays on top of the box office on Friday with $8 million. Last weekend was buoyed by a decent Saturday bump from Valentine’s Day. This weekend it does not have that luxury, and it will also take a tremendous hit on Sunday since it’s the weekend of the Academy Awards and that is an anti-box office holiday. Any gains Fifty Shades makes on Saturday will be completely undone by Sunday, but it still has the weekend title tied up (sorry) for a second weekend. Look for a weekend of $21.6 million.
The DUFF
In third place is the highest new opener of the weekend and it’s not the film you’d expect. No, not that one either. High school comedy The DUFF earned $4.3 million on Friday. This still isn’t all that spectacular, but it’s ahead of most estimates and where either of the other releases was expected to land. It’s another victory for targeted marketing, as I and probably most of you reading this are probably just too old to have noticed any ads for it. A weekend of $11.2 million is a big win here.
McFarland, USA
The inspirational high school cross-country drama took in $3.6 million on Friday. This mirrors last year’s Million Dollar Arm, which took in $3.4 million on its way to a $10.5 million weekend. I’m looking for a weekend of $10.1 million here.
Hot Tub Time Machine 2
Unwanted Sequel Syndrome strikes again, as Hot Tub Time Machine 2 lands with a thud on Friday with just $2.3 million. All the advertising in the world doesn’t help if nobody really cared in the first place. This is a little less than half of what Hot Tub Time Machine opened to in 2010. It’s going to have a weekend of $6.2 million and everyone involved will likely pretend it never existed.
Notable Holdovers
Last weekend’s surprise Kingsman: The Secret Service holds a bit better than expected with $5.3 million, down 49% from last Friday. It was boosted by the holiday weekend last week (its Sunday matched Friday) but this weekend will knock it down to around $17 million.
Elsewhere, just in time for the Oscars, Still Alice expands to 765 theaters and lands in tenth place on Friday with $650,000. Julianne Moore is a likely winner for Best Actress here, so there might be another expansion or two in the works over the next couple weekends.