B.O. Preview: September 20, 2013

It's friday! That means another weekend at the theatres is upon us... Let's take a look at what is being released this week...

The biggest opening this week comes from Prisoners, a drama starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal that is poised to take 1st place over the weekend opening up in 3,200+ theatres. Prisoners tells the story of Keller Dover (Jackman) facing every parent's worst nightmare. His six-year-old daughter, Anna, is missing, together with her young friend, Joy, and as minutes turn to hours, panic sets in. The only lead is a dilapidated RV that had earlier been parked on their street. Heading the investigation, Detective Loki (Gyllenhaal) arrests its driver, Alex Jones (Paul Dano), but a lack of evidence forces the only suspect's release. Knowing his child's life is at stake, the frantic Dover decides he has no choice but to take matters into his own hands. But just how far will this desperate father go to protect his family? A good enough sounding presence and it's from an Oscar winning director in Denis Villeneuve, albeit an Oscar winner for a foreign language film. The problem I have with Prisoners is it is admitedly the first adult drama of the fall season, generally a good time for this type of film to come out, but it may be a little too dark for the average adult movie goer, that being said a strong cast and solid marketing campaign should be enough to push Prisoners ahead of holdover Insidious 2 and other nationwide release Battle of the Year. A solid 20+ start is expected, I'd say the ceiling would be Les Miserables (27 mil last christmas) but would be shocked if this movie didn't open with a 2 in front of the 8 figures.
Battle of the Year as a much worse future ahead of it, moviegoers are obviously getting bored of the 3D dance movie gimmick as shown by the poor numbers Step Up Revolution put up last summer (a hair over 11 mil). Sony is only expecting 6 - 8 million for the weekend which even given Chris Brown's starring role in the film, seems about right considering the disasterous reviews it has gotten thus far and the fact that it's barely hitting 2000 theatres over the weekend. However it is important to note that it's been a slow time for teen movies so after everyone went to see Insidious 2 last weekend, nothing else in theatres would really appeal to the aged 13-19 crowd, I'd suggest seing Insidious 2 however or Percy Jackson if you haven't already.

Insidious 2 had a big opening, and although the first held well, this one will likely fall in with the usual horror movies, immensely frontloaded taking a dive of about 60% the 2nd week. Last week's other opening The Family checked in a little better than the studio thought, normally these types of movies hold decently well but given the new arrival of Prisoners as direct competition I expect about 50% fall. The same could be said for The Butler, that at this point has already gone well above expectations as it is a surprise summer movie hit, also surprisingly a summer hit is We're The Millers which has had middling reviews at best but continues to hold strong due to strong word of mouth, reminds me a little bit of Battle: Los Angeles which suffered from negative reviews but audiences couldn't get enough. I expect the Millers to continue to dip between 30 and 40 percent like it has been.

Family movies Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters and One Direction: This Is Us will likely see their exit from the top 10 this week with the new entries of Battle of the Year and Prisoners, One Direction benefited last weekend from an extended "fan cut" being released which limited it's drop, expect it to all off the face of the earth this week, while Percy is holding okay, the domestic box office has to be dissapointing at this point with only 62+ million domestically.

Other movies opening this week are Ron Howard's Rush which opens solely in New York and Los Angeles, as well as sex addict comedy Thanks For Sharing which opens at only 247 theatres and the reviews have been mixed so don't expect a million from either title, but don't be surprised to see Rush put a per-theatre average around $100,000.

The only other "new" movie is the re-release of The Wizard of Oz in IMAX. Considering the success of past IMAX releases (Raiders of The Lost Ark, Top Gun) I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a top 10 movie ahead of Elysium but it'll be close.

My Predictions:

1. Prisoners (21 mil)
2. Insidious Chapter 2 (15.3 mil)
3. Battle Of The Year (8 mil)
4. The Family (7.9 mil)
5. We're The Millers (4.2 mil)
6. The Butler (4 mil)
7. Instructions Not Included (3.6 mil)
8. Riddick (3.4 mil)
9. Planes (2.4 mil)
10. The Wizard of Oz (1.8 mil)

Last Week:

My Prediction                                                 Actual
1. Insidious 2 (30 mil)                                     1. Insidious 2 (40.3 mil)
2. The Family (15 mil)                                     2. The Family (14 mil)
3. Instructions Not Included (7.5 mil)                3. Riddick (6.8 mil)
4. Riddick (7 mil)                                            4. The Butler (5.5 mil)
5. The Butler (5.8 mil)                                     5. We're The Millers  (5.4 mil)
6. We're The Millers (5.5 mil)                           6. Instructions Not Included (4.9 mil)
7. Planes (3.9 mil)                                          7. Planes (3.1 mil)
8. Elysium (2.5 mil)                                        8. One Direction: This Is Us (2.5 mil)
9. One Direction: This Is Us (2 mil)                  9. Elysium (2.1 mil)
10. Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters (1.8 mil) 10. Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters (1.9 mil)

Scorecard: C+ Apart from underguessing Insidious 2 by 10 million... Oops. The only other big mistake was Assuming Instructions Not Included wouldn't fall as much as it did, I even gave it a chance to make more than last week but guess conservatively, but not conservatively enough as it ended up dropping 40%. The 2 next highest differences was overguessing The Family by 1 million and overguessing Planes by 0.8 million. Altogether not horrible, but no t particularly good either.

B.O. Preview: September 13th 2013

Hello all, and thank you for reading this first post in this new series I like to call Box Office preview, I'm your friendly neighbourhood Blogger-Man DonnyFTW so what should you see this weekend? Let's take a look:

This weekend we have 2 new nationwide releases, first up opening in +2,900 theatres is the 2nd chapter of horror franchise Insidious, which follows the haunted Lambert family as they seek to uncover the mysterious childhood secret that has left them dangerously connected to the spirit world. The first Insidious grossed a mere 13 million in it's opening weekend, which is very low for a supernatural horror film, though the movie did have surprisingly strong word of mouth which lead it to finish up it's run with a 54 million total. Couple the popularity of the first film with the heavy marketing push for chapter 2 and you should see an opening above $20 million, taking into account that director James Wan was responsible for the surprise hit of the summer in "The Conjuring" I wouldn't be surprised to see it push up to $30 million especially given the Friday the 13th opening. I think any less than the originals $54 million overall would be a disappointment for the film, though I expect a steep drop off after Friday and Saturday given that at this point everyone knows what to expect from Insidious and horror movies tend not to hold that well over time so the opening weekend will likely be responsible for 50% of the movie's total income.

The other new release is Luc Besson's "The Family" starring Robert DeNiro, now by this point we know DeNiro in gangster roles generally sell tickets, even though at this point in his career he's limited to playing ex-mafioso's given the fact that he is now 112 years old. The film is cleverly marketing this as "From Martin Scorsese" as he is producing to mask the fact that Besson is indeed directing and he's best known for doing "The Fifth Element" and a bunch of middling to no success movies highlighted by "The Professional" starring Jean Reno and Gary Oldman and "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" starring Milla Jovovich and Dustin Hoffman in roles they'd rather forget I'm sure. So what is The Family even about? A mafia boss and his family are relocated to a sleepy town in France under the witness protection program after snitching on the mob. Despite the best efforts of Agent Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones) to keep them in line, Fred Manzoni (Robert DeNiro), his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their children Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D'Leo) can't help but revert to old habits and blow their cover by handling their problems the "family" way, enabling their former mafia cronies to track them down. Chaos ensues as old scores are settled in the unlikeliest of settings in this darkly funny film. Seems like an interesting enough storyline. I'd have to guess the floor for this movie is around 10 million although I expect something around Righteous Kill money, about 16 million. Though that was released in 2008, adjusted for today's theatre prices would be around 18 and a half million. Where as the ceiling would have to be Analyze This, adjusted for inflation would be just below 30 million, though it originally was a hair under 20 million in 1999. I can't see the latter happening but I foresee a little less than Righteous Kill... Then again, I seem to be guessing on the high end for The Family, but call me old fashioned, I love me some Tommy Lee Jones.


The wild card here might be Lee Daniels' "The Butler" who has been scoring some pretty nice green from the adult crowd thus far as they have been pretty much ignored since August began, now that there is another movie playing targeted at an older crowd it'll be interesting to see if The Butler continues to hold well, thus taking money away from The Family, or if it'll start it's descent down the top 10 ladder now that it has some competition.

Expect more sharp declines (50%+) from Elysium, One Direction: This Is Us, The World's End, The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones, Getaway and You're Next. As well as you can expect Riddick to take a similar plunge than it's predecessor did on it's second weekend (60%+) especially considering the Horror/Sci-Fi club has been looking forward to Insidious 2. This Is The End is also expected to digress in a big way after Sony threw it back into theatres to collect some more money off the back of James Franco's Roast.

Movies that will have decent holds tend to be the ones that have a family appeal so continue to expect the likes of Planes, Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters and surprise August hit We're The Millers to lose about 40% of their grosses. Also expect to see Spanish sensation Instructions Not Included in the top 5 again as I suspect word of mouth will keep it strong and may even gain on last weeks box office this in it's 3rd week of release.

So here is how I imagine things shaking out:

1. Insidious Chapter 2 (30 million)
2. The Family (15 million)
3. Instructions Not Included (7.5 million)
4. Riddick (7 million)
5. The Butler (5.8 million)
6. We're The Millers (5.5 million)
7. Planes (3.9 million)
8. Elysium (2.5 million)
9. One Direction: This Is Us (2 million)
10. Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters (1.8 million)