Weekend Forecast for February 26-28, 2016
By Reagen Sulewski
February 26, 2016
In due time, every moment of the 1998 Calgary Winter Olympics (official motto: “Sure, Why Not”) will eventually be committed to a dramatic film (Coming soon – Aaaaaaaaaaaaa: A Story of Luge). For now, we’ll settle for Cool Runnings and this weekend’s Eddie The Eagle, the story of Eddie Edwards, the 24-year-old British ski jumper who competed in the Olympics despite having almost no actual training. An amateur skier, he saw that Britain had no competitive ski jumpers and thus, he could earn a way into the Olympics. Facing opposition from every angle, he managed to find a way to compete… and finished dead last. Like, by a lot.
That’s not the point of the story, of course, as the Olympics are in equal parts about the thrill of competition, determining which country is best (dammit, Luxembourg) and the thrill of pleasing corporate sponsors. Eddie’s story is a fantastic one in that first realm, as it exemplifies the idea of competing for competition’s sake. An almost unrecognizable Taron Edgerton, most recently of Kingsmen: The Secret Service, straps on the oversized goggles to play Eddie, while Hugh Jackman plays the John Candy role (and there’s a natural statement) as the disgraced coach to takes on the challenge of getting Eddie up to snuff, or ensuring that he doesn’t get snuffed on the hill.
It’s your standard heartwarming underdog sports drama that doesn’t have lot to say, but it’s inoffensive enough and the material is still memorable, which is often just enough to make for a good, medium level performer that runs forever on cable (c.f. the 24/7 airing of Cool Runnings that takes place). I’d look for this to grab a nice $12 million this frame.
Lastly, we have Triple-9, or Dirty Cop Thriller: The Movie. When a crew of crooked Atlanta cops is blackmailed into performing an impossible heist, they decide to do what groups have done since time immemorial – let the new guy bite it. By setting up an “officer down” situation, that’ll create enough of a distraction to let them carry out what they need to do. The problem – the rookie doesn’t bite it, and doin's set to transpirin’.
Starring Anthony Mackie, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, Aaron Paul, Chiwetel Ejiofor and a curiously left out of the ad campaign Kate Winslet, it’s a slightly intriguing if almost entirely generic-looking cop thriller (I think Harrelson alone has been in about 12 of these movies). This isn’t one I would hold out much hope for financially, and should hit just $8 million this weekend.
So, we get a third straight weekend of Deadpool at the top of the charts, as it continues its march to becoming the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. It is already, by a significant margin, the highest grossing X-Men or X-Man related film, and it’s within rock throwing distance of the first two Iron Man movies, which Deadpool would totally do if he were near Iron Man. About the only Marvel films that look safe from Deadpool at this point are the first two Spider-Man films and the two Avengers movies, and wouldn’t you have liked to have gotten odds on that a month ago. For its third weekend, it should pull in about $27 million.
Kung Fu Panda 3 churns along solidly this weekend, with about $7 million, though it’s still way behind pace compared to other entries in the series. Religious drama Risen rounds out our slate with about $7 million as well.
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Forecast: Weekend of February 26-28, 2016
|
Rank |
Film |
Number of
Sites |
Changes in Sites
from Last |
Estimated
Gross ($) |
|
1
|
Deadpool
|
3,856
|
+134
|
28.5
|
|
2
|
Gods of Egypt
|
3,117
|
New
|
13.4
|
|
3
|
Eddie the Eagle
|
2,042
|
New
|
12.1
|
|
4
|
Triple-9
|
2,205
|
New
|
8.7
|
|
5
|
Kung Fu Panda 3
|
3,290
|
-158
|
8.0
|
|
6
|
Risen
|
2,915
|
No change
|
7.8
|
|
7
|
How to Be Single
|
3,047
|
-310
|
4.2
|
|
8
|
Race
|
2,387
|
+18
|
3.9
|
|
9
|
The Witch
|
2,204
|
+158
|
3.5
|
|
10
|
Zoolander 2
|
1,974
|
-1,444
|
2.4
|
Continued:
1
2
|
|
|
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