Comedy will notch one weekend win between the 3 weeks dominated by Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the parade of summer spectacles that begins with next week’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2, as THE OTHER WOMAN (20th) will easily take the multiplexes this weekend according to preliminary numbers at Deadline. The Other Woman earned about $9.6M on Friday, which should give it a $25M weekend–not as strong as the $31.6M for 2011’s Bad Teacher, Cameron Diaz’s last comedy lead, but that had a buzzier premise and opened in the thick of June summer season.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER (Disney) should take 2d place for the weekend, with $4.4M on Friday that could give it $12-14M by Sunday (last weekend was skewed by high ticket sales on Good Friday but lower attendance on Easter Sunday, so comparisons may be a bit off-kilter). That keeps it on the road to $250M in the US, which would be more than 40% better than the first Captain America.
Captain America could find itself challenged for the #2 slot by HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (TriStar/Sony), which was just behind it on Friday with $4M, and which could move forward with strong Sunday sales. It’s on target for $75M, an extremely strong result for a low-budget feature with limited marketing costs.
RIO 2 (20th/Blue Sky) and newcomer BRICK MANSIONS (Relativity) were neck-and-neck on Friday with $3.2-3.3M, but Saturday matinees will pull Rio 2 ahead for the weekend with around $13M, headed for $120-125M in the US. Brick Mansions will probably end up with $9-10M, an OK start for the moderately-budgeted action movie.
Two flops at wildly different budget figures took in around $1.5M on Friday, tying the horribly expensive TRANSCENDENCE (Warners) with the cheap THE QUIET ONES (Lionsgate) for weekends that won’t reach $5M. At that level, Quiet Ones, despite its low cost, will lose money, but nothing compared to Transcendence, which doesn’t look like it will perform well enough overseas to make up for its dreadful performance here.
Both of last weekend’s other openings fell steeply on their 2d Fridays, with BEARS (Disney) down to $1.3M (perhaps a $3.4M weekend) and A HAUNTED HOUSE 2 (Open Road) plunging 75% to below $1M (less than $3M for the weekend).
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