FRIDAY JULY 13 BOX OFFICE RESULTS: Ice Age 4 Has Weekend to Itself and Is Just Okay At Best

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The 28th weekend of 2012 is looking like a very weak $149 million for the Top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 29% from this weekend last year and down 42% from the multi-year average for this weekend.           

Ice Age: Continental Drift from 20th Century Fox (the fourth Ice Age film) opened with $16.3 million Friday and is headed for an estimated $44.9 million opening weekend, way below the $58.5 million ShowBuzzDaily forecast.  The film should average $11,600 for the weekend at 3,881  theaters.  We expected the usually reliable family audience to bounce back from Dawn of the Dinosaurs and return in numbers closer to Meltdown‘s.  Turns out even the family audience has taste and is realizing how lame this franchise is — the audience is starting to agree with the critics, who have become progressively harsher on the series.   Ice Age: Continental Drift is on track for a $174 million domestic total, according to our ShowbuzzDaily Forecast.  A complete international revenue update for this and all other films in wide release late Sunday.

The returning films appear to be behaving mostly as forecast in our Weekend Predictions.  Amazing Spider-Man is on pace to drop 46% in its second weekend to $33.2 million (a little better than forecast), pushing the estimated final domestic projection to $294 million.  Dropping 34% this weekend, Ted should hit our $21.3 million forecast for weekend three, with the final domestic projection edging up to $222 million.  Brave is on pace for a $233 million domestic final, while Savages and Katy Perry: Part of Me moved up a bit to $53 million and $31 million, respectively.

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

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.

Total Box Office Volume

The Top 12 Films this weekend are looking like $147 million total Friday-Sunday, down 29% from the same calendar weekend last year and down 42% from the average for this weekend the past four years.  This is one of the weakest mid-July weekends in recent memory.

Check back tomorrow morning for updated weekend figures and revised estimates for domestic final grosses, as well as updated international figures later in the day Sunday.  On Monday, we will update the ShowbuzzDaily Summer Movie Fantasy Draft, as well.