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According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS (Sony) will pull ahead of THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT (Universal) for the weekend thanks to Saturday and Sunday matinee business, although Engagement is still ahead as of Saturday and the race will be close. (Both, however, will be behind Think Like A Man and possibly The Lucky One.) Pirates, with $7.9M for Fri/Sat (almost doubling Friday’s result on Saturday), is projected to end up with $11.5M by Sunday, while Engagement, with $8.2M in its first 2 days (including around a 30% Saturday bump), is estimated to fall behind with $11M. We won’t know the real result until final numbers are released on Monday. Rankings aside, though, both movies are having disappointing openings and will be hard-pressed even to hit breakeven once marketing costs are included on their ledgers..
In any case, all those films will be far ahead of the weekend’s other new arrivals, SAFE (Lionsgate/Summit) and THE RAVEN (Relativity), which had 20-25% Saturday bumps and are headed for around $7.5M in their opening weekends.
THINK LIKE A MAN (Screen Gems/Sony) will take the weekend title with an excellent drop under 50% for $17-18M. THE LUCKY ONE (Warners) looks to be neck-and-neck with Pirates and Engagement for the 2d-4th spots, but while its 2d weekend decline is only slightly worse than Think‘s, that’s considerably less impressive in its dramatic soap genre.
THE HUNGER GAMES (Lionsgate/Summit), still phenomenal, is headed for a $10.7M weekend, down less than 30% in its 6th time at bat for a $372M total. If that number holds, only 4 movies in the past decade will have done better in a 6th weekend. Hunger Games is on track to put the entire Harry Potter and Twilight franchises in its rear-view mirror by the end of next weekend.
Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY all weekend for updated boxoffice and analysis!
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