Articles

August 17, 2014
 

EARLY WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Turtles, Guardians Hold Their Lead

 

There wasn’t much shift in position among the top titles at the Saturday box office.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (Nickelodeon/Paramount) kept its $1M edge over GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (Marvel/Disney), roughly $11M to $10M.  For Turtles, that’s down about 50% from last Saturday, and suggests it will end up with a $28M weekend, a not-bad 55% 2d weekend drop.  Guardians was down about 41% from last Saturday, for a probable $25M weekend that should put it at $222M after 17 days, the fastest pace of any movie this year.

As expected, LET’S BE COPS (20th) overtook THE EXPENDABLES 3 (Lionsgate) for top honors among the newcomers, since Cops had gotten its frontloading over with on Wednesday.  Cops grew by nearly 20% over Friday to $6-7M, and is heading for a $17M weekend ($25M since Wednesday).  Expendables lost 4% on Saturday to $5.5M or so, roughly the same pattern (although at considerably lower numbers) as Expendables 2.  It should have a $15-16M weekend, and needs to perform exceptionally well overseas. THE GIVER (Weinstein) fell as much as 10% from Friday to something like $4.5M, on its way to its own dystopian $12.5M weekend.

THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY (DreamWorks/Disney) continued to hold extremely well, down just about 30% Saturday-to-Saturday to $3.2M and a $7M weekend.  INTO THE STORM (Warners), however, fell 55% from last Saturday to $3M, also heading for $7M.  STEP UP: ALL IN (Summit/Lionsgate) will barely top $2M for the weekend.



About the Author

Mitch Salem
MITCH SALEM has worked on the business side of the entertainment industry for 20 years, as a senior business affairs executive and attorney for such companies as NBC, ABC, USA, Syfy, Bravo, and BermanBraun Productions, and before that, at the NY law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. During all that, he has more or less constantly been going to the movies and watching TV, and writing about both since the 1980s. His film reviews also currently appear on screened.com and the-burg.com. In addition, he is co-writer of an episode of the television series "Felicity."