Weekend Forecast for June 7-9, 2013
By Reagen Sulewski
June 7, 2013
Into this scenario we bring Ethan Hawke's family, who is holing up for the annual event, but also take in a man desperate to escape a group that's hunting him. At this point we're really just down to a home invasion story a la Funny Games or The Strangers (not to dismiss the difference in vision in those two films, but...), which is ultimately not all that interesting or novel.
So the film is going to rest mostly on Ethan Hawke, who isn't all that bad a leading man, in that if you put him in a wide release, a consistently small number of people will show up, and he's not going to drive people away. I wouldn't give him a Bourne movie, but you could definitely do worse. I ultimately don't see this premise being all that interesting to help boost it over that base level, and I'd say we're looking at about $13 million this weekend.
Who the overall champ of the weekend could be is an interesting story. The inside edge would tend to go with Fast & Furious 6, thanks to its $35 million second weekend, but that comes after a drop over two-thirds from its opening. Not that surprising, really, but it's the rare film that turns that around into a solid third weekend. As it happens, Fast Five was one of those films, and the drop was exacerbated anyway by the Memorial Day hangover. I don't anticipate legs here, exactly, but some righting of the ship for a $19 million weekend isn't crazy.
The main challenger is Now You See Me, the magic-themed caper film that surprised many by opening in second place with $29 million. Mid week, it's already managed to beat out Fast & Furious 6 on one day, although this is the kind of film that tends to perform better on summer weekdays because of demographics, rather than the youth oriented car chase movie. Word of mouth on it is okay, and not rapturous, so it should get close with around $17 million, but ultimately fall a tad short of top spot.
News was bad for After Earth this weekend, and things are just going to get worse. The Will Smith/M. Night Shyamalan team-up managed just $27 million in its opening weekend and was greeted with derision by those that did actually see it. This is one expensive, noisy failure, and should drop to around $11 million for its second weekend.
Following this, we have a trio of films that finished in the $16 million area last weekend: Star Trek Into Darkness, Epic and The Hangover Part III. Epic's 50% drop is a bit disappointing considering the lock it had on family audiences, but Fox has always struggled with its non-Ice Age properties. Perhaps this can manage $10 million this weekend. Star Trek Into Darkness seems destined to just limp away – if a film that's going to earn over $200 million domestically can truly be described as “limping." Anyhow, it should bring in another $9 million or so this frame.
It will take three weekends for The Hangover III to reach the $100 million milestone, something the second film had done in four days. To say that the public has voted on whether there should somehow be a fourth film in this series is an understatement, and the vote is that Ed Helms should find himself somewhere else to get humiliated. It's easy to get carried away and call this a bomb – it's going to make some money after all is said and done – but we're definitely seeing what happens when a franchise overstays its welcome. Give it $7 million this frame.
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Forecast: Weekend of June 7-9, 2013
|
Rank |
Film |
Number of
Sites |
Changes in Sites
from Last |
Estimated
Gross ($) |
|
1
|
Fast and Furious 6
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
19.4
|
|
2
|
Now You See Me
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
17.6
|
|
3
|
The Internship
|
3,365
|
New
|
15.1
|
|
4
|
The Purge
|
2,536
|
New
|
13.3
|
|
5
|
After Earth
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
11.4
|
|
6
|
Epic
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
9.9
|
|
7
|
Star Trek Into Darkness
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
9.1
|
|
8
|
The Hangover Part III
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
7.3
|
|
9
|
Iron Man 3
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
4.8
|
|
10
|
The Great Gatsby
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
3.9
|
Continued:
1
2
|
|
|
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