Weekend Forecast for March 29-31, 2013
By Reagen Sulewski
March 28, 2013
Anyway, Saorise Ronan plays one of the last remaining natural humans (at least at first), who after being implanted somehow retains some of her original personality. Maybe. Kind of. Released out into the wild, she connects with a surviving band of humans and begins a typically Meyerian chaste romance (I think she has a lifetime subscription to Nonthreatening Boys). Much brooding and whisper-shouting ensues.
There's basically zero reason to expect this to break out like Twilight – there's no actual connection to that series other than Meyer, and the book is a bit of an obscurity, relatively speaking. You can't just up and create a phenomenon, which is what it takes for something like Twilight to become what it did. Movie goers aren't typically looking for more films by the writers of the films they liked. Strangely for this material, it has a relatively well-known director, Andrew Niccol, who also did the adaptation of the script. Perhaps this says more about my perception of Niccol than anything.
The sci-fi setting is likely to make this a much tougher sell for the core audience for this, teen girls, and the lower profile distributor isn't going to have as much juice to push the film. I'd look for a modest $18 million this weekend.
Oh for the love of... it's another Tyler Perry movie (I think that may have been the provisional title). Tyler Perry's Temptation, which is something-something attractive woman sleeps with a billionaire, stars Jurnee Smolett-Bell, who you should remember from Friday Night Lights and if you don't, why don't you, and also has Kim Kardashian in a moderately sized role which is enough for me to condemn it completely. It's a non-Madea film, which means it's less likely to break out into the 20s, and that's as much as I care to talk about this, other than that it's a lot more overtly sexual-looking that Perry's other films, though I'm sure it still carries the heavy-handed moralism throughout his work. Give it $15 million this weekend.
Three of March's big films carry on as significant earners this weekend. Last weekend's champ The Croods benefited from being the first family film in some time, and from a bright character design, earning $43 million. Reviews weren't amazing by any stretch, but as it remains the sole family option, it should be able to carry on with a decent second weekend of about $28 million.
Olympus Has Fallen was a bit of a shocker with a $30 million opening weekend, with its “Die Hard in the White House” doing a fair bit better than an actual Die Hard. Perhaps no one's more excited than Gerard Butler, who had been running a cold streak that made (slightly outdated reference alert) the Washington Generals look like the Miami Heat. In contrast to The Croods, this one was viewed as pretty dumb, and should fall steeply to around $14 million.
That leaves us with Oz the Great and Powerful, which has pulled in close to $200 million in three weeks, and is doing a so-so job of muddling its way to a $250 million final total, and maybe $600-700 million worldwide. One wonders if that's enough to justify franchisation, and also has to marvel that one of what is likely to be the top 10 films of the year is barely justifying its existence. Look for about $11 million this weekend.
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Forecast: Weekend of March 29-31, 2013
|
Rank |
Film |
Number of
Sites |
Changes in Sites
from Last |
Estimated
Gross ($) |
|
1
|
G.I. Joe: Retaliation
|
3,719
|
New
|
51.3
|
|
2
|
The Croods
|
4,065
|
+19
|
28.1
|
|
3
|
The Host
|
3,202
|
New
|
18.4
|
|
4
|
Tyler Perry's Temptation
|
2,047
|
New
|
15.3
|
|
5
|
Olympus Has Fallen
|
3,106
|
+8
|
14.7
|
|
6
|
Oz the Great and Powerful
|
3,324
|
-481
|
11.4
|
|
7
|
The Call
|
2,439
|
-68
|
4.5
|
|
8
|
Admission
|
2,161
|
+1
|
4.0
|
|
9
|
Spring Breakers
|
1,379
|
+275
|
3.5
|
|
10
|
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
|
1,575
|
-1,585
|
2.6
|
Continued:
1
2
|
|
|
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