Weekend Forecast for August 24-26, 2012
By Reagen Sulewski
August 23, 2012
While the horror model of cheap productions with moderately recognizable names that don't have to make much money to be profitable has been one of the most lucrative in Hollywood over the last few years, studio expectations seem to be even lower than normal for The Apparition, which is debuting in just 810 theaters. All the shots of Ashley Greene in her underwear in the world can't make up for being in about a third of the theaters a wide release normally is. A best case scenario probably puts this under $5 million for the weekend.
Expanding in time for the Republican National Convention, a wily piece of political agitprop called 2016: Obama's America gets into about 1,000 theaters this weekend. Created by the paranoid and delusional political columnist Dinesh D'Souza, it purports to predict what President Obama would do in a second term once elected, despite doing none of the things that would lead up to that in his first term. Right-wing polemics haven't had as much success in theaters as the more progressive examples in recent years, although even those have fallen out of favor. This film is from the same producers as the wildly avoided Atlas Shrugged film, which is going ahead with a sequel anyway. Although it's made about $2 million in under 200 theaters already, I don't think there's a mass audience for this kind of film – although I'm sure all the screenings in Tampa will be filled. I see this as performing similarly to An American Carol, the misfire of a Michael Moore parody, which earned about $7 million total. I'd look for around $3 million this weekend.
The sheer lack of attractive options leaves things wide open for The Expendables 2 to win another weekend despite no one being particularly enthusiastic about it. Opening to a little less than the first Expendables film, the sequel should suffer a greater drop off just due to it being a sequel. Add in that it's fairly mediocre at best and we should see a drop to about $12 million.
Second place may belong to The Bourne Legacy, which had kind of a disappointing second weekend of $17 million. The $38 million start had people thinking that it was at the start of something that might carry the Bourne franchise into its next stage with momentum. More Bourne films might still happen, but with just $110 million or so domestically, it's a bit of a tougher sell. Look for it to drop to around $9 million this weekend.
That's right about where ParaNorman could end up for its second weekend. The stop-motion animated film landed about where it was expected to with $14 million, slightly behind the studio's first project, Coraline. Since that was based on a better known project and had a Neil Gaiman connection, that's to be expected, and word-of-mouth is fairly strong for this. While ParaNorman won't match the $75 million of Coraline, $60 million isn't a crazy number to look at.
Last week's unusually deep roster of films over $10 million continues with The Campaign, which lost about half its business in weekend two, which might be a little disappointing for a Will Ferrell/Zach Galifianakis collaboration, but still leaves the film on pace to earn about $85 million, towards the lower end of Ferrell's range when he's trying. $7 million this weekend seems about right here.
A chance for some legginess comes next with The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Disney's late summer tear-jerker/adolescent grabber about a magical young boy. This seems like exactly the kind of film that might take families by storm and build slowly, and I think that starts with a little under $7 million this weekend.
The Dark Knight Rises gets to vault another film on the all-time list this weekend, beating Toy Story 3 by at least Friday. Hitting the top 10 and passing The Lion King won't happen this weekend, but should happen for certain by the next one. The top end seems to be seventh place at this point, which is not too bad for a disappointment.
Still going down the list, we have Sparkle, the posthumous Whitney Houston movie, and Hope Springs, the film that dares us to think about Tommy Lee Jones having sex. Both seem due for around $5 million this frame.
|
Forecast: Weekend of August 24-26, 2012
|
Rank |
Film |
Number of
Sites |
Changes in Sites
from Last |
Estimated
Gross ($) |
|
1
|
The Expendables 2
|
3,355
|
+39
|
12.4
|
|
2
|
The Bourne Legacy
|
3,562
|
-101
|
9.2
|
|
3
|
ParaNorman
|
3,455
|
+26
|
9.0
|
|
4
|
Premium Rush
|
2,255
|
New
|
7.5
|
|
5
|
The Campaign
|
3,302
|
+47
|
7.0
|
|
6
|
The Odd Life of Timothy Green
|
2,598
|
0
|
6.8
|
|
7
|
The Dark Knight Rises
|
2,606
|
-551
|
6.5
|
|
8
|
Hope Springs
|
2,402
|
+41
|
5.3
|
|
9
|
Sparkle
|
2,244
|
0
|
5.0
|
|
10
|
Hit and Run
|
2,870
|
New
|
4.7
|
Continued:
1
2
|
|
|
|
Print this column
