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July 10, 2012
 

WEEKLY BOX OFFICE ACTUALS & YEAR TO DATE July 2-8: Huge Seven-Day Box Office Take

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Written by: Mitch Metcalf
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With the Fourth of July falling on a Wednesday, most of the past week performed like weekend days, driving the seven-day domestic box office haul to one of the highest in recent memory.

The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume

All films in wide release playing between July 2 and July 8 grossed an incredible $381 million, up 44% from the same week in 2011 and up 45% from the four-year average for the comparable week. Year to date (now $5.5 billion for wide-release films) is now 11% ahead of 2011 (up from +9% last week).  Similarly, the year-to-date total is now 8% ahead of the more stable multi-year average for the similar period (up from +6% last week).

Domestic Box Office Volume: All Wide-Release Films through July 8, 2012 ($ millions)
2011 4-year Average 2012 vs 2011 vs 4yr Avg
Week #27 $264 $263 $381 +44% +45%
Year to Date $4,968 $5,079 $5,499 +11% +8%
How strong is a $381 million box office week?  Last year’s highest grossing week was $355 million (Dec 26, 2011-Jan 1, 2012), while 2010’s best week was $367 million (June 28-July 4, 2010).  In 2008, the top week was $322 million (July 14-20, 2008).  To find a higher week in the recent past, 2009’s top week was $442 million (Dec 28, 2009-Jan 3, 2010, when Avatar, Sherlock Holmes and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel formed a very powerful combination).  It’s not like this week needed an Avatar to drive business, this past week benefited from multiple films (Amazing Spider-Man, Ted and to some extent Brave) peaking at the right time in their relative life-cycles and July 4 falling in the middle of the week and creating, in effect, an extremely long weekend period.
Weekend Actuals versus Studio Estimate

The weekend and the week actually could have been even higher if the optimistic Spidey studio estimate had held.  Amazing Spider-Man came in at $62.005 million officially for the Friday-Sunday portion of its opening, a fairly high 4.6% below the estimate from Sony (based on Friday and Saturday actual numbers and estimating Sunday’s take).  The other (lower) openers were accurately estimated by their studios, however.  Savages came in at $16.017 million, only 0.9% below the estimate issued by Universal Sunday morning.  Katy Perry: Part of Me came in at $7.138 million for Friday-Sunday, a mere 0.2% below the Paramount estimate.  

 

Updated Estimates of Final Grosses

The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Grosses (the estimated North American gross when the film ends its run) are summarized below for films released the last six weeks. Pay attention to the final domestic grosses, which are much more important than individual weekend grosses and especially weekend rankings.

Updated ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final Estimates Domestic Final Gross ($ millions) percentile
Amazing Spider-Man 281 96
Brave 241 95
Madagascar 3 226 95
Ted 207 94
Prometheus 128 85
Magic Mike 112 82
TP’s Medea’s Witness Protection 66 66
Savages 52 57
Moonrise Kingdom 44 52
Rock of Ages 40 47
That’s My Boy 39 46
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 37 45
Katy Perry: Part of Me 22 23
People Like Us 14 12
To Rome with Love 12 10

 

Weekend Predictions for the July 13-15 weekend should be posted Wednesday. This weekend features the opening of Ice Age: Continental Drift.

Also, catch the latest update on the ShowbuzzDaily Summer Movie Fantasy Draft, posting soon.

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About the Author

Mitch Metcalf
MITCH METCALF has been tracking every US film release of over 500 screens (over 2300 movies and counting) since the storied weekend of May 20, 1994, when Maverick and Beverly Hills Cop 3 inspired countless aficionados to devote their lives to the art of cinema. Prior to that, he studied Politics and Economics at Princeton in order to prepare for his dream of working in television. He has been Head of West Coast Research at ABC, then moved to NBC in 2000 and became Head of Scheduling for 11 years.
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