Hollywood bounced back swiftly from last weekend’s Halloween doldrums, thanks to a pair of A-level openings. INTERSTELLAR (Par/Warners) is in line for a win on Friday, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, with up to $18M. The Interstellar numbers are a bit tangled, because for the first part of Thursday, it showed in 249 non-digital theatres and made $800K, which isn’t counted toward its Friday number (it had a total of $2.2M from those theatres from 8PM Tuesday until the same time on Thursday), and then on Thursday night, it launched its full complement of 3561 theatres and took in $2.7M (which does count as “”Friday” money).
All of this is relevant because BIG HERO 6 (Disney) was right behind Interstellar on Friday with $16M, which included $1.4M from Thursday night. Big Hero 6, which has the advantages over Interstellar of 3D ticket prices (although Interstellar has Imax) and a running time that’s shorter by a full hour, is expected to move ahead and take the weekend, because the family audience should give it a considerably bigger Saturday matinee bump. Big Hero may be at $55M+ by Sunday, while Interstellar‘s weekend total should be $3-5M less. By way of comparison, Christopher Nolan’s Inception (a summer opening, and without anything like Interstellar‘s 2-day film-only “preview”) started with $62.8M, while Big Hero 6 would be below the $67.4M Frozen earned over Thanksgiving, its first wide weekend of release, although significantly higher than the $48.8M opening of Tangled. Both Interstellar and Big Hero 6 cost about the same $325M with worldwide marketing included, and both are almost certain to be substantial global hits.
A vast gulf separated the two newcomers from everything else in the market, with $1.7-2M Fridays for OUIJA (Universal), down 41% from last week’s depressed Friday, GONE GIRL (20th), remarkably up 10%, NIGHTCRAWLER (Open Road), down 38%, FURY (QED/Columbia/Sony), just about even, and ST VINCENT (Weinstein), also holding steady.
Oscar hopeful THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (Focus/Universal) opened in 5 theatres and is heading for a solid if unspectacular $40K per theatre weekend average. That’s much better than the $23K debut of Whiplash, but far from the $106K average of Birdman‘s premiere.
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