Preliminary box office numbers at Deadline give Friday, as expected, to CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 (Sony), and it will easily win the weekend as well. Its $10M opening day is above the original Cloudy in 2009 ($8.1M) but below last year’s Hotel Transylvania ($11M), and with a sequel’s usual frontloading, it’s unlikely to reach the $40M weekend that had been widely predicted, including here.
Even though Cloudy is looking a bit softer than anticipated, it’s far ahead of the weekend’s other openings. RUSH (Universal) had the OK start that last week’s limited release foretold, with a $3.8M Friday and perhaps $11M for the weekend. That will make it the lowest wide release of Ron Howard’s directing career since at least The Missing in 2003 ($10.8M), and possibly since EdTV‘s $8.3M in 1999.
DON JON (Relativity) and BAGGAGE CLAIM (Fox Searchlight) both started modestly with around $3M on Friday, with $7.5-9M likely for the weekend. Both, however, have notably lower budgets than Cloudy and Rush.
Great reviews didn’t bring PRISONERS (Warners) the second weekend it might have hoped for, down 57% to $3.3M on Friday, with a $10-11M weekend in store that will mark a 50% or so decline. That compares to Weekend 2 drops of 16% and 35% for Argo and The Town, other serious post-film festival Warners openings. Both Prisoners and Rush are likely to be hurt by next weekend’s arrival of Gravity in terms of their long-term prospects. INSIDIOUS CHAPTER 2 (FilmDistrict) will fall another 60% in its third weekend with $1.9M on Friday, and other holdover are well below that.
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About the Author
Mitch Salem
MITCH SALEM has worked on the business side of the entertainment industry for 20 years, as a senior business affairs executive and attorney for such companies as NBC, ABC, USA, Syfy, Bravo, and BermanBraun Productions, and before that, at the NY law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. During all that, he has more or less constantly been going to the movies and watching TV, and writing about both since the 1980s. His film reviews also currently appear on screened.com and the-burg.com. In addition, he is co-writer of an episode of the television series "Felicity."
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