EARLY WEEKEND BOXOFFICE REPORT – 12/1/12

• Tweet
• Email

• Tweet
• Email

No big surprises in Saturday’s boxoffice numbers compared to Friday’s, according to preliminary figures at Deadline:  the holdovers rose about 50% (aside from the family movies, which doubled), and the dismal new arrivals stayed about even.

That left THE TWILIGHT SAGA:  BREAKING DAWN PART 2 (Summit/Lionsgate) and SKYFALL (Sony/MGM) pretty much neck-and-neck at the top, both with likely $17M or so weekends.  For Breaking Dawn 2,  that’s about $500K better than its predecessor did last year on the weekend after Thanksgiving, while Skyfall is now almost $80M ahead of the previously most successful Bond.  Just a notch behind those two are LINCOLN (Disney/DreamWorks/20th)  and RISE OF THE GUARDIANS (DreamWorks Animation/Paramount) at about $13M each.  Lincoln, however, is the far more successful of the pair, with $83M already earned and a much lower cost than Guardians, which hasn’t even hit $50M yet.  One more step down is LIFE OF PI (20th), with a likely $11M weekend, down a heavy 50% from its opening.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (Weinstein), still at only 371 theaters, held well with only a 30% or so drop from last weekend, but its $8K per theatre average continues to keep it in the lower tier of Oscar contenders.  (Lincoln has a $6500 average in over 2000 theatres.)  It’s in danger of being eaten up by the increasingly excellent buzz for the upcoming holiday competition.

As for the weekend’s openings, what can one say?  KILLING THEM SOFTLY (Weinstein) won’t even get to $7M for the weekend, and will need a heavy influx of Brad Pitt fans to turn out overseas to have any hope of breaking even on its $15M (plus marketing) cost, while THE COLLECTION (LD) didn’t even draw horror fans, with a weekend that will be lucky to reach $3M.