Friday night numbers for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (Sony) should be considered more preliminary than usual, because the $34-35M figures for the day at Deadline and elsewhere are based on the idea that while Amazing 2 had been tracking for around $30M for most of Friday, it suddenly upticked with Friday night’s shows–but on the west coast, those tickets were still being sold at the time of the reports, so they were by definition incomplete. Similarly, the $91-93M weekend estimates being bandied about are founded on the idea that Amazing will do remarkably well in Saturday matinees with younger audiences, holding even with its Friday performance (that’s what Thor 2 managed to do, but Captain America 2 dropped 6% on Saturday, Iron Man 3 was down 9%, and The Avengers fell 14%), by no means a sure thing. At this point, Amazing 2 should be $87-93M for the weekend, and while any number in there would be very big, there are bragging rights at stake with respect to Thor 2 ($85.7M) and Captain America 2 ($95M), as well as the bigger picture of Sony trying to place the Spider-Man franchise in the top echelon of the superhero game. (Also, for those who care about Cinemascore grades, Amazing 2‘s B+ is underwhelming for an all-quadrant blockbuster–by comparison, Captain America 2 had an A, and Thor 2 an A-.)
Naturally, nothing else is remotely close to Spider-Man this weekend, but THE OTHER WOMAN (20th) is doing a creditable job of counterprogramming, with $4.5M on its 2d Friday, down about 51% from its opening day last week. That should stabilize to around a 45% drop for the weekend to $14M. After that, HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (TriStar/Sony) and CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (Disney/Marvel) were just above $2M on Friday, giving both weekends around $8M. RIO 2 (20th/Blue Sky) was just behind, with $1.7M on Friday and $7.5M for the weekend.
Last weekend’s other openings plunged on their 2d Fridays. BRICK MANSIONS (Relativity) was down 68% to $1.1M, for what might be a $3.5M weekend, and THE QUIET ONES (Lionsgate) fell 65% to $650K and a weekend under $2M.
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