Weekend Forecast for January 29-31, 2010
By Reagen Sulewski
January 29, 2010
With those two films as its main competition, Avatar should no real problem maintaining its top spot for a seventh straight weekend. Earlier this week, it passed Titanic as the worldwide champ, essentially without breaking into a sweat. It's still behind Titanic for the US total, but with only about $40 million to go, it would take the plot of 2012 happening for real to stop it. It's also set records for being the fastest film to $500 million, as well as the biggest second through sixth weeks ever. It ought to extend that last record by at least one more week, beating Titanic's seventh weekend of $25 million with around $27 million this weekend. Oscar nominations and wins will ultimately affect what its final number will be, but it's probably even money that it gets to $750 million domestically at this point, and about $2.5 billion internationally, shattering a figure that really was untouchable about two months ago.
The rest of the weekend's returning films are kind of afterthoughts, with numbers two through five from last weekend all looking likely to fall more than 50% from last weekend. Legion was the surprise breakout of last weekend's trio of new films, with the gothic horror film (probably giving it too much credit for having a style, but what the hey) with $17.5 million, but this feels like a one-and-done. Reviews were abysmal and once you've gotten over the shock of evil granny, there's not a lot left to sell people on. It'll drop to $8 million.
That's about the same figure that The Book of Eli should see for its third weekend, with the post-apocalyptic thriller faring a little better in world-of-mouth than Legion, not that that's saying much. At this point, it's headed for about a $90 million finish domestically, which is kind of a middle of the pack result for Denzel Washington and by far the best result for the Hughes Brothers.
While kids films are often bulletproof for word-of-mouth, Tooth Fairy might be the rare exception. Dwayne Johnson kind of embarrassed himself with this supernatural comedy that he probably hoped (feared?) would turn into a Santa Clause situation, but it was greeted with a collecting "what were you thinking?" from all and sundry. The $14 million opening is a testament to just how good of a business kids' films can be, but it should fall to about $7 million this weekend.
After a surprising double digit opening weekend, The Lovely Bones lost its steam in its second weekend. Peter Jackson's literary follow-up to King Kong and a spiritual sequel to Heavenly Creatures, it's almost officially out of the Oscar race now, but should be able to reach $50 million. This is kind of a worst case scenario given the buzz the film had going into awards season, but it's something for Paramount at least.
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Forecast: Weekend of January 29-31, 2010
|
Rank |
Film |
Number of
Sites |
Changes in Sites
from Last |
Estimated
Gross ($) |
|
1
|
Avatar
|
3,974
|
-64
|
28.3
|
|
2
|
Edge of Darkness
|
3,066
|
New
|
21.9
|
|
3
|
When in Rome
|
2,456
|
New
|
12.4
|
|
4
|
Legion
|
2,476
|
0
|
8.6
|
|
5
|
The Book of Eli
|
3,075
|
-36
|
8.1
|
|
6
|
Tooth Fairy
|
3,345
|
+1
|
7.0
|
|
7
|
The Lovely Bones
|
2,638
|
+67
|
4.4
|
|
8
|
Sherlock Holmes
|
2,250
|
-450
|
4.1
|
|
9
|
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
|
2,526
|
-447
|
3.5
|
|
10
|
It's Complicated
|
2,096
|
-205
|
3.5
|
Continued:
1
2
|
|
|
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