FRIDAY JULY 12 Box Office Report

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Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #28 of 2013 looks like a decent $192 million for the top 12 films, up 5% from the comparable weekend the last few years.  It was a pretty good weekend for the ShowbuzzDaily Weekend Forecast, with most movies coming in within one or two million dollars of forecast.

Opening at 3,491 theaters Friday, Grown Ups 2 from Sony grossed $16.3 million on Friday and is on track for a $44.5 million opening weekend (just a shade under the $45.5 million ShowbuzzDaily forecast). The film is pacing toward a three-day average of $12,700 per theater for the weekend (above the $5,333 opening weekend average for all wide-release films the last two years). Critical sentiment is hateful: just 7% positive overall at RottenTomatoes (with top critics a similar 9% positive). Grown Ups 2 is headed for $120 million total domestic, significantly below the $162.0 million domestic total for Grown Ups (released June 25, 2010 and suffering a similar 10% positive critics score with 8% positive among top critics).

Opening at 3,275 theaters Wednesday, Pacific Rim from Warner Brothers grossed $14.6 million on Friday and is on track for a $36.5 million opening weekend (somewhat below the $39 million ShowbuzzDaily forecast). The film is averaging $11,100 per theater for the weekend. As with most films directed by the very gifted Guillermo del Toro, critical sentiment for Pacific Rim is actually fairly good: 72% positive at RottenTomatoes with all critics (and top critics a similar 67% positive), and opening night audiences gave it a reported A- CinemaScore. But the ridiculous premise of the gigantic battling robots creates a very real ceiling for a movie that cost over $200 million to make and another $75 million to market. Pacific Rim is headed for maybe $104 million total domestic.

With a decent -47% decline in its second weekend and very good weekday business, the domestic total for Despicable Me 2 has been upgraded to $351 million (from the initial $295 million estimate last week), now well above the $251.5 million domestic total for Despicable Me (released July 9, 2010).  Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain has been upgraded slightly to $41 million domestic total, while the other holdovers are tracking similarly to last week.

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.