Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
July 23, 2011
America, frick yeah!
Captain America: The First Avenger
The latest comic super-hero adaptation opens on top on Friday (more on that in a moment) with a $25.7 million Friday, with $4 million of that coming in midnight sneaks. This Friday tops all of the summer's previous comic book entries, coming in ahead of Green Lantern ($21.6 million), X-Men: First Class ($21.1 million) and even just barely beats out Thor ($25.4 million). All three films had weekend multipliers that ranged from 2.48 to 2.57 so we have a pretty darn good idea of where Captain America will end up. It's not a total breakout, but it's not going to embarrass itself either (and like I said, it's going to win the weekend.) Look for it to earn $58.2 million for the weekend.
Friends With Benefits
The second movie this year about, well, you know, earned $6.8 million on Friday. This is less than No Strings Attached's $7.2 million back in January. While it seems strange on the surface that Friends With Benefits would make less, part of that is likely to be the release date (something like this will have a better weekend outside of the summer months, where it will have stronger weekdays) and part of that is that it's, like, the nineteenth R-rated comedy in the last couple months, after Bridesmaids, The Hangover Part II, Bad Teacher and Horrible Bosses. so it's a victim of lousy timing all around, even if it's not a terrible movie. Friends With Benefits should come in with $18.3 million for the weekend.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
After a record-setting Friday and opening weekend, Deathly Hallows Part 2 has a second Friday of $14.6 million. Yup, that's a Friday to Friday decline of 84.1%. If we remove the midnight showings figure from that, it's a much more quaint 69.9%. Either way, yikes. While the total domestic grosses for the Harry Potter films has ranged from $249 million to $317 million, it was widely expected after the mammoth opening that it was a lock to crush the franchise record (set with the first film), though it is already at $240 million after seven days of box office, so there's still a chance, but yikes. The answer to the question of how many people were going to wait past opening week to see it was "virtually nobody." Counting the midnight figure, this is one of the largest Friday to Friday declines in box office history. The good news for it is that it will stabilize itself from this point on, but wow, nobody saw that one coming. Give Deathly Hallows Part 2 a second weekend of $46.4 million.
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