The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume
All films in wide release playing between August 20 and August 26 grossed a fairly typical $146 million, down 1% from the four-year average for the comparable week and up 6% from the same week in 2011. Year to date (now over $7 billion for wide-release films) continues to run 5% ahead of last year.
| Domestic Box Office Volume: All Wide-Release Films through August 26, 2012 | ($ millions) | |||||
| 2011 | 4-year Average | 2012 | vs 2011 | vs 4yr Avg | ||
| Week #34 | $138 | $148 | $146 | +6% | -1% | |
| Year to Date | $6,663 | $6,636 | $7,014 | +5% | +6% | |
Weekend Actuals versus Studio Estimate
Most of the films opening this past weekend had greatly exaggerated Sunday morning estimates by their respective studios. Premium Rush came in officially at $6,030,164 today for Friday-Sunday, down fully 4.3% from Sony’s optimistic estimate for the weekend Sunday morning.
Hit and Run came in at $4,526,222 for the opening weekend, down 3.2% from the studio estimate. Similarly, The Apparition came in 3.8% below the Warner Brothers estimate (to $2,841,488).
The one film that actually exceeded the studio estimate was 2016 Obama’s America, which came in officially at $6,509,433 for Friday-Sunday, up 4.4% from the estimate.
On Sunday morning (if you believed Sony), Premium Rush was going to beat 2016 by about $60,000 to claim the World’s Tallest Midget Award for films opening this turgid weekend. Instead, 2016 ended beating Premium Rush by half a million dollars. In the end, it meant the difference between 7th and 8th place — far behind the $13,423,579 grossed by Expendables 2 in its second weekend.
Updated Estimates of Final Grosses
The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Grosses (the estimated North American gross when the film ends its run) are summarized below for films released the last six weeks. Pay attention to the final domestic grosses, which are much more important than individual weekend grosses and especially weekend rankings.
| Updated ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final Estimates | Domestic Final Gross ($ millions) | percentile | |
| Dark Knight Rises | 443 | 99 | |
| Bourne Legacy | 108 | 82 | |
| Expendables 2 | 86 | 73 | |
| The Campaign | 85 | 73 | |
| Hope Springs | 62 | 60 | |
| Total Recall | 57 | 56 | |
| ParaNorman | 53 | 54 | |
| Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days | 49 | 51 | |
| Odd Life of Timothy Green | 44 | 48 | |
| Step Up Revolution | 34 | 34 | |
| The Watch | 32 | 32 | |
| Sparkle | 27 | 26 | |
| 2016 Obama’s America | 26 | 25 | |
| Premium Rush | 19 | 15 | |
| Hit and Run | 12 | 7 | |
| The Apparition | 7 | 2 |
Weekend Predictions for the August 31-September 2 weekend should be posted Wednesday. This weekend features the Wednesday openings of Lawless and Oogieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure, as well as the Friday opening of The Possession. It should be quite the Labor Day weekend crapfest in theaters.
Also, catch the latest update on the ShowbuzzDaily Summer Movie Fantasy Draft.
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