FRIDAY FEBRUARY 15 BOX OFFICE REPORT

• Tweet
• Email

• Tweet
• Email

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #7 of 2013 is not as bad as the last few weeks: $123 million for the top 12 films during the traditional Friday-Sunday period of this holiday weekend (only 4% behind the pace for the same weekend the last few years).        

Opening at 3,552 theaters Thursday (with $8.2 million), A Good Day to Die Hard from 20th Century Fox grossed $7.2 Friday and is on track for a $22.5 million opening weekend (down significantly from the $32.6 million ShowbuzzDaily forecast earlier this week).   The Bruce Willis action film is averaging $6,600 per theater for the weekend (slightly above $5,333 average first three-day weekend for all wide-release films the last two years).  Critics are not enthusiastic: 17% positive reviews at RottenTomatoes.  The 5th Die Hard installment should finish with $74 million total domestic (nowhere near the $134.5 million for Die Hard with a Vengeance, the last Die Hard film in June 2007).

Opening at 3,223 theaters Thursday (with $8.8 million), Safe Haven from Relativity grossed $7.1 million Friday and is on track for a $22 million opening Friday-Sunday weekend (slightly above the $19.6 million ShowbuzzDaily forecast).   The film is averaging $6,800 per theater for the weekend, while critical sentiment is a very cool 13% positive.  Safe Haven is headed for $69 million total domestic. 

Opening at 3,228 theaters Friday, Escape from Planet Earth from Weinstein Company opened with $3.7 million Friday and is on track for $15 million weekend (up a bit from the $13.5 million ShowbuzzDaily forecast).   The film is averaging $4,600 per theater for the weekend, while early critical sentiment is a weak 25% positive.  Escape is headed for $64 million total domestic, fairly good playability given its animated genre.

Opening at 2,950 theaters Thursday (with $2.5 million), Beautiful Creatures from Warner Brothers grossed $2.3 million Friday and is on track for a $7.8 million weekend (below the $11.6 million ShowbuzzDaily forecast).   The film is averaging a poor $2,600 per theater for the weekend, while critical sentiment is a mediocre 45% positive.  Beautiful Creatures is headed for $20 million total domestic.

Note: The table above summarizes an early look at the weekend.  The first column is a reminder of each film’s ShowBuzzDaily Forecast for the weekend (in brackets).  The second column, on which the films are sorted, displays the new weekend projection for each film, based on the Friday numbers (the third column).  The final column is a preliminary estimate of the ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Total number for the film’s total run in North America.  A “++” indicates the Domestic number has been upgraded; a “–” indicates a downgrade.

In case you missed them, click to see this week’s Weekend Predictions.

Total Box Office Volume

The Top 12 Films this weekend are looking like $123 million total Friday-Sunday, down an okay 4% from the average comparable weekend the last four years and down 14% from the same weekend last year.

Check back tomorrow for more complete Weekend Studio Estimates based on Saturday’s actual box office, as well as the International Box Office report.