Weekend Forecast for August 7-9, 2015
By Reagen Sulewski
August 7, 2015
In “premises that are difficult to swallow” land, Ricki and The Flash stars Meryl Streep as an aging Stevie Nicks-type rock legend attempting to reunite with her family (played in part with some stunt casting of her real-life daughter Mamie Gummer) after years of being on the road. While Streep can essentially play anything and is once again receiving raves for her performance, the film itself looks like a bit of sentimental, feel-good pablum. Screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jonathan Demme go together like chalk and cheese, and the cast guarantees this plays pretty much only to the older portion of the boomer set. I'd expect a weak weekend of about $7 million here.
Two family films opened earlier this week, though neither should have a huge impact on the weekend. The confusingly titled Dragonball Z: Resurrection 'F' pulled in $3.5 million over two days on just 900 screens which is moderately impressive, but is the definition of a niche film, and the last one of these films to receive a North American release flamed out in about five days. I'd look for about $5 million on the weekend.
Aardman studio's Shaun the Sheep also premiered early, but grabbed a very modest $850,000. We're quite a ways away from the high flying days of Chicken Run, and the last Aardman film to hit theaters earned just $11 million during its opening weekend. That was The Pirates! Band of Misfits and at least had a bit of star power behind it – Shaun the Sheep is a beloved character to be sure , but to a much younger audience than many of their other films have been. The Wednesday showing proves that to a certain extent, and we should expect just $5 million this weekend.
Mission: Impossible 5 – Adjective Noun beat tracking expectations to earn $55 million on its opening weekend in a number that still feels like an underperformance. An action franchise like this does seem like it should be competing in the ranks of the mega-openers. Whether it's latent dislike for Cruise or bad experiences with some of the earlier entries in the series (I lean more towards the former), this franchise has never quite performed to what it was capable of. It should compete for first place this weekend but fall a little short with $31 million.
Like many road trips, the Vacation reboot started strong, then became a hollow shell of itself, with people clamoring to get out of the car by the end. Opening to just $14 million over the three-day weekend and $21 million over five, it's looking to wind up with maybe $60 million domestic, which would probably put it below the take of the original film – in 1983 dollars. In case you were wondering, that's bad. Look for about $7 million this weekend.
Coming in with a little over $6 million each this frame will be Ant-Man and Minions, with Pixels and Trainwreck pulling in about $5 million each this weekend. We are basically running out the string here until the prestige pictures start showing up in October.
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Forecast: Weekend of August 7-9, 2015
|
Rank |
Film |
Number of
Sites |
Changes in Sites
from Last |
Estimated
Gross ($) |
|
1
|
Fantastic Four
|
3,995
|
New
|
35.6
|
|
2
|
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
|
3,988
|
+22
|
31.0
|
|
3
|
The Gift
|
N/A
|
New
|
8.8
|
|
4
|
Ricki and the Flash
|
1,603
|
New
|
8.0
|
|
5
|
Vacation
|
3,430
|
+19
|
7.4
|
|
6
|
Ant-Man
|
2,910
|
-412
|
7.1
|
|
7
|
Minions
|
3,113
|
-462
|
6.8
|
|
8
|
Trainwreck
|
2,517
|
-443
|
5.4
|
|
9
|
Pixels
|
2,864
|
-859
|
5.2
|
|
10
|
Shaun the Sheep
|
2,320
|
New
|
5.0
|
Continued:
1
2
|
|
|
|
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