Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
October 22, 2016
Four new wide releases try to wake up the box office and two sort of succeed. Kinda?
Boo! A Madea Halloween
Tyler Perry’s Boo! A Madea Halloween starring Tyler Perry is the number one movie on Friday with $9.4 million. This is right in line with the opening Fridays of a few other Madea films, including Madea’s Family Reunion ($10.4 million in 2006), Madea’s Big Happy Family ($10.4 million in 2011) and Madea’s Witness Protection ($10.1 million in 2012). We last saw Madea in 2013’s A Madea Christmas, which started with $5.7 million in December, when the box office rules are a little different.
Anyway, this shows that Perry’s audience hasn’t moved on from Madea, at least on opening day. Being holiday themed, A Madea Halloween has a short shelf life to begin with and Perry’s films generally don’t have legs anyway, so this is a good start and should win the weekend but it’ll be gone in a flash. Look for a $24.4 million weekend.
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
The second Jack Reacher film, which mainly exists because it did much better overseas than domestically (Tom Cruise’s crazy period didn’t hurt him internationally, obviously), opens in second place on Friday with $8.7 million. Heavily marketed, this is a bump up from the $5 million first day for the first film in 2012, but that was also in December right before Christmas, so it’s hard to compare the two. It’ll be a close race between Never Go Back and A Madea Halloween for the top spot and I think Madea has the edge but if Cruise still has some star power among older viewers who show up Saturday and Sunday that might take it over the top. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back should end up with about $24 million for the weekend.
Ouija: Origin of Evil
The shockingly well reviewed Ouija: Origin of Evil starts with just $5.4 million on Friday. That’s a decline from the $8.3 million Ouija started with on this weekend in 2014. As is generally the case with a lot of horror, it’ll have made its production budget back by the end of the weekend, but that’s probably not the opening Universal was hoping for. Ouija turned its Friday into a weekend of $19.9 million for a lousy 2.4 multiplier. The same fate awaits Origin of Evil, which gives it a weekend of about $13 million.
Keeping Up With the Joneses
The comedy is thrown to the wolves with just $1.9 million on Friday despite over 3,000 theaters. Zach Galifianakis now has his second bomb in less than a month. Let’s go with a weekend of $5 million and the fact that you’ll have forgotten about both Keeping Up With the Joneses and Masterminds existing when both are on Netflix in a couple months.
Notable Holdovers
Ben Affleck’s The Accountant drops 52% from last Friday to $4.4 million. It performed somewhat above expectations last weekend but can’t keep the momentum up. The weekend decline will be under 50%, but it’s still looking at a bump to fourth place on the weekend with $12.8 million.
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Projected Estimates for the Top Ten (Three-Day)
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Projected
Rank |
Film |
Estimated Gross |
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1
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Boo! A Madea Halloween
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24.4
|
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2
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Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
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23.9
|
|
3
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Ouija: Origin of Evil
|
12.9
|
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4
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The Accountant
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12.8
|
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5
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The Girl on the Train
|
7.1
|
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6
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Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
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6.1
|
|
7
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Keeping Up With the Joneses
|
5.0
|
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8
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Deepwater Horizon
|
3.7
|
|
9
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Kevin Hart: What Now?
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3.2
|
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10
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Storks
|
2.9
|
|
|
|
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