Weekend Forecast for September 19-21, 2014
By Reagen Sulewski
September 19, 2014
Another film with an excessively long title debuts this weekend in This Is Where I Leave You, a dramedy which centers around four siblings returning home after the death of their father, where all family business will be settled. Starring Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver and Cory Stoll as the siblings, along with Jane Fonda as their mother, and let's throw in Timothy Olyphant, Connie Britton, Kathryn Hahn and Rose Byrne to really make this a quality (if not specifically marquee) cast. The story, however, does not seem to be there, and for a film that can only really be trading on its quality, to not have those reviews overwhelmingly indicating quality hurts a great deal. The frequent focus on jokes about Fonda's character's boob job do not bode all that well for what it has to offer. It looks, in large part, like a less messed-up version of August: Osage County, or a wackier version of Everybody's Fine, neither of which really lit up the box office. While there's probably some fine performances in the film, as a whole it seems to be totally forgettable, and should bring in just a modest $8 million this weekend.
Things ticked up from an apocalyptically bad result a couple of frames ago thanks in large part to last weekend's surprise performance of No Good Deed. The Idris Elba/Taraji P. Henson thriller brought in $24 million last weekend, and while that's in line with the upper limits of previous black-focused and starring films, I lean towards this being more of a crossover hit, as the two leads aren't really touchstone figures in black cinema, nor is it a film that hits on the usual messages that have made those films popular. No, it's just a film that a bunch of people wanted to see and was advertised well, which doesn't seem like a thing that should have to be explained, but here we are. I'd look for a slightly above average drop-off thanks to genre effects and middling word-of-mouth to around $13 million this weekend.
Dolphin Tale 2 experienced a bit of a falloff from the first film about its tail-less cetacean, opening to $15 million last weekend. The light and disposable family film nonetheless is the only family option out right now, and should hold well considering that. I'd expect just under $10 million this frame.
We reach the end of the run for Guardians of the Galaxy and significance as it drops to about $5 million in its eighth weekend of wide release. The late summer phenomenon crossed the $300 million mark last weekend and will likely rule the 2014 box office chart until at least late December.
|
Forecast: Weekend of September 19-21, 2014
|
Rank |
Film |
Number of
Sites |
Changes in Sites
from Last |
Estimated
Gross ($) |
|
1
|
The Maze Runner
|
3,604
|
New
|
42.3
|
|
2
|
A Walk Among The Tombstones
|
2,712
|
New
|
21.4
|
|
3
|
No Good Deed
|
2,175
|
0
|
13.5
|
|
4
|
This Is Where I Leave You
|
2,868
|
New
|
9.7
|
|
5
|
Dolphin Tale 2
|
3,656
|
0
|
9.5
|
|
6
|
Guardians of the Galaxy
|
2,846
|
-258
|
5.0
|
|
7
|
The Drop
|
1,192
|
+383
|
3.8
|
|
8
|
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
|
2,348
|
-609
|
2.7
|
|
9
|
Let's Be Cops
|
2,312
|
-442
|
2.5
|
|
10
|
If I Stay
|
2,371
|
-669
|
2.5
|
Continued:
1
2
|
|
|
|
Print this column
