This weekend, Denzel Washington is proving himself yet again one of the last truly reliable movie stars. Just a week after Liam Neeson flopped with A Walk Among the Tombstones, preliminary numbers at Deadline have THE EQUALIZER (Columbia/Sony) at $12.5-13M on Friday (including $1.5M from Thursday night)–roughly the same amount ($12.7M) Tombstones made in its entire opening weekend. Washington hasn’t opened an action movie to under $20M in over a decade, and Equalizer should be his biggest start since Safe House in 2012, which had a $13.6M Friday and $40.2M weekend on the way to a total of $126.4M in the US and $208.1M worldwide. With a moderate $55M production budget, Equalizer should turn a tidy profit even with marketing costs included in the mix.
THE BOXTROLLS (Laika/Focus/Universal) had a Friday slightly under $5M, roughly the same as the $4.5-4.6M opening day for Laika’s previous stop-motion animated films, 2009’s Coraline and 2012’s Paranorman. They had $16.8M/14.1M opening weekends, $74.3/56M domestic totals, and earned $124.6M/107.1M worldwide. The appeal of their films is nothing if not consistent.
Last weekend’s #1 THE MAZE RUNNER (20th) fell 55% from last Friday to $5M, a drop that should moderate over the course of the weekend to 50% to $16M, as the movie heads to around $90M in the US, good enough to justify the sequel that’s been green-lit. THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU (Warners) declined 46% Friday-to-Friday to $2.1M, and may drop around 40% for the weekend to $7M. A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES (Universal) was crushed by the arrival of Equalizer, down 73% from last Friday to $1.3M and perhaps $4.5M for the weekend. NO GOOD DEED (Screen Gems/Sony) and A DOLPHIN TALE 2 (Alcon/Warners) should each have $4-5M weekends.
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (Marvel/Disney) is still hanging in the Top 10, with $1M on Friday and a likely $3.5-4M weekend that will bring its US total close to $320M.
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