Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
October 22, 2011
Paranormal Activity 3
Picking up where the Saw movies left off, Paranormal Activity has become the latest Halloween horror franchise, earning $25.6 million on Friday. This is a nice increase from the $20.1 million Paranormal Activity 2 earned on this weekend last year. The Saw franchise never saw significant bumps like this in its heyday, only from Saw I to Saw II (when an increase is expected given the built in audience) and from Saw VI to Saw VII (which only happened because Saw VI was kneecapped by the first Paranormal Activity). On top of positive reviews and good to solid word-of-mouth, I think you can safely pencil in Paranormal Activity 4 for a year from now. It also helps matters that it's already made back its production budget several times over.
Paranormal Activity 2 ended up with $40.6 million for the weekend, which was a 2.02 multiplier. Ouch. This is right in the wheelhouse of the Saw franchise as well, and there's no reason to think it won't continue along the same path. Even bumping the multiplier up to 2.1 would mean an incredibly impressive $53.7 million weekend.
The Three Musketeers
Met with a collective shrug from audiences, another version of The Three Musketeers opens to $2.9 million. It's allegedly in 3D but that obviously didn't help it in terms of box office. Let's call it $8.4 million and be done with it.
Johnny English Reborn
Rowan Atkinson's Johnny English Reborn opens with $1.1 million, although on just 1,552 screens. Normally we'd point and laugh at this, but Johnny English has nearly doubled its $45 million production budget thanks to worldwide box office (where Mr. Bean is a huge international star, remmeber), so this is really all just gravy. If you were curious, the first Johnny English actually opened to $9.1 million in July 2003, and earned $28 million in its North American run. The sequel is not going to be nearly as fortunate, but again, it really doesn't matter. Give it a weekend of $3.2 million.
Notable Holdovers
Real Steel fought off Footloose last week to hang onto the top spot for a second weekend. This week, it drops 33% from last Friday to $3.1 million. A fantastic Saturday kept it on top last weekend, and The Three Musketeers is no threat to it as the obligatory Big Dumb Action Movie. Look for a third weekend of $11.1 million.
Footloose holds surprisingly well, down 35% to $3.5 million. It will earn back its budget sometime today, and is looking to stay relatively leggy with a weekend of $10.8 million.
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