THE FAULT IN OUR STARS (20th) was unable to attract ticket buyers beyond its core of young female fans, and according to preliminary numbers at Deadline and elsewhere, the result was a mammoth Friday-to-Saturday drop of at least 50%, pushing the film’s Saturday box office down to $12-13M, and its weekend to $46-48M. The Saturday plunge was even worse than the 40+% drops that the Twilight movies tended to have–it’s comparable to the hugely front-loaded opening for the final Harry Potter, which fell 53% on its 2d day (mostly because it had taken in almost half its “opening day” box office just from Thursday midnight shows). Earlier this year, the remake of Endless Love had a 52% drop on its 2d day, but that had the excuse of having opened on Valentine’s Day. Fault is still a huge hit, with a good chance of exceeding $100M at the US box office, it’s just not the blockbuster that appeared possible this morning.
Compared to Fault, the Saturday box office for EDGE OF TOMORROW (Warners) looked relatively strong by holding even with Friday’s $10.7M. But that number was so low that the movie desperately needed an uptick on Saturday–and didn’t get one. Edge will only manage $27-28M for the weekend, and will have a hard time getting past $75M in its entire US run, a trickle compared to its enormous production and marketing costs. We’ll have numbers tomorrow for its international performance, including its all-important China opening, but preliminary numbers for China suggested that while Edge would out-earn Tom Cruise’s Oblivion there, with an opening of $20-25M compared to Oblivion‘s $9.2M, it wasn’t going to come close to the blockbuster $40-50M opening it would need to have any hope of avoiding giant losses.
MALEFICENT (Disney) had an OK 30% bump on Saturday to $13.5M, down almost 50% from last Saturday, and positioning it for about $33M for the weekend, down by more than half from last week. It’s still likely to run out of steam before hitting $200M in the US. X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (20th) will also be down over 50% for the weekend to around $15M, on track for about $220M in the US. A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST (Universal) will fall close to 60% for a $7M weekend and a US total that won’t exceed $45M.
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