Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
March 31, 2012
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games is easily on top in its second weekend with $18.9 million on Friday, crossing the $200 million mark in its eighth day of release (now having earned $208.8 million), the fourth fastest film to do so. The Friday-to-Friday decline is 72.3% when you include the opening day's midnight showings and 61.1% when they're taken out. On the surface it feels like an extreme nose dive and indicates that it was heavily front-loaded and to a degree it was, but keep in mind we're still dealing with the third largest opening weekend of all time. The drop was bound to be high. This isn't The Dark Knight (which, by the way still fell 65.4% on its second Friday with midnight showings included).
What's ever in The Hunger Games' favor in its second weekend is its (midnight showings removed) opening weekend multiplier of 2.73. That's quite solid when dealing with numbers that huge. It pulled in $50.3 million on Saturday. That's the second best Saturday of box office ever. Better than anything Harry Potter, Twilight or Batman ever made. (The record is the held by Spider-Man 3, which had a $51.3 million Saturday on top of a $59.8 million Friday.) A strong Saturday likely indicates The Hunger Games is reaching older audiences. The cross-demographic success of this film cannot be understated. As much as it was compared to it in the weeks leading up to its release, The Hunger Games is no Twilight. It's Twilight++. This leads me to believe it's in for another very strong weekend and will see a very solid multiplier bump with a solid Saturday. I would look for Katniss and friends to finish the weekend with $59.4 million for the weekend.
Wrath of the Titans
Another of 2012's sequels that nobody was really clamoring for, Wrath of the Titans opened to $12.4 million. 2010's Clash of the Titans started with $28.7 million. Ouch. Add in that this "benefited" from 3D and IMAX viewings and it's more ugly. The good news is Wrath shall fare a little better in the multiplier department since Clash started with more and was also released over Easter weekend. Let's go with $30.9 million for Wrath of the Titans, which is just barely over half of the opening weekend of Clash of the Titans.
Mirror Mirror
The first of two 2012 films based on Snow White, Mirror Mirror starts with $5.9 million. It's going to benefit from being the freshest family option out there, which makes it some effective counterprograming. All told, a weekend of $18.2 million isn't terrible.
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