Weekend Forecast for August 10-12, 2012
By Reagen Sulewski
August 10, 2012
Speaking of setting things on fire, here comes Nitro Circus: The Movie. Based on the MTV series and a spin-off of sorts of Jackass, it's the big screen version of Travis Pastrana's crew of maniacs who attempt to injure themselves with increasingly outlandish stunts on dirt bikes, BASE jumps, extreme ski runs and the like. While the Jackass series proved extremely popular in theaters and in 3D even, Nitro Circus simply is not as well known, and the audience for these stunt films is pretty limited. Witness X-Games 3D, which admittedly was less about showmanship and deliberate risks to life and limb, but which opened to less than $1 million. This shouldn't do that poorly, but will likely have a limited impact on the box office with around $3 million this weekend.
Three weekends at the top is all she wrote for The Dark Knight Rises, though that's after close to $375 million. Much ink has been spilled about the ways in which it has and has not lived up to expectations or the marks set by its predecessor, but in raw terms we're still talking about a film that's going to approach $500 million domestic and break $1 billion worldwide. Would that all our disappointments performed that way. I'd look for around $20 million this weekend, which isn't all that far off from what The Dark Knight earned in the same spot.
The remake of Total Recall didn't inspire a lot in the way of justifying its existence, either in its content or in its lead actors, and this apathy was reflected in a $25 million opening. This is a pretty costly throw under the bar for an film budgeted north of $125 million, and virtually guarantees that it won't pass even the $100 million mark domestically. Whether this will inspire Hollywood to be a bit more circumspect in its choices regarding remakes remains to be seen... ha. No, of course it won't. Add $14 million here this weekend.
The third and likely final Wimpy Kid movie – if last weekend's opening serves as any kind of warning to quite while they're ahead – is next with around $8 million. While these films remain dirt cheap to make, it's difficult to get three movies out of these franchises, and harder still to get more than that before your audience moves on. It'll have some competition for the kid market from Ice Age: Continental Drift, which should be around $6 million.
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Forecast: Weekend of August 10-12, 2012
|
Rank |
Film |
Number of
Sites |
Changes in Sites
from Last |
Estimated
Gross ($) |
|
1
|
The Bourne Legacy
|
3,746
|
New
|
36.1
|
|
2
|
The Campaign
|
3,205
|
New
|
29.6
|
|
3
|
The Dark Knight Rises
|
3,690
|
-552
|
20.4
|
|
4
|
Total Recall
|
3,601
|
0
|
14.0
|
|
5
|
Hope Springs
|
2,361
|
New
|
8.8
|
|
6
|
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
|
3,398
|
+7
|
8.4
|
|
7
|
Ice Age: Continental Drift
|
3,102
|
-440
|
6.0
|
|
8
|
Ted
|
2,202
|
-565
|
4.1
|
|
9
|
The Watch
|
2,461
|
-707
|
3.6
|
|
10
|
Step Up Revolution
|
1,898
|
-708
|
2.9
|
Continued:
1
2
3
|
|
|
|
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