FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14 BOX OFFICE RESULTS

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The 37th weekend of 2012 is looking like $71 million for the Top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a rebound from last week’s near record low but still around 17% below comparable weekends in the past.  Resident Evil: Retribution opened about how we forecast Wednesday, but Finding Nemo 3D is opening well below our forecast in second place.  The holdovers are generally doing slightly better than forecast this week, again reflecting the theme of bit of a rebound this week at the box office.     

Resident Evil: Retribution from Sony opened with $8.4 million Friday and is on pace for $21.0 million Friday-Sunday (quite close to the $22.0 million ShowbuzzDaily forecast issued Wednesday).  A weekend mutliplier of 2.5 times Friday’s gross is normal for a genre film’s first weekend, as hardcore fans rush to the first showings.  The opening weekend for the fifth Resident Evil film translates to a $6,970 average at 3,012 theaters (comfortably above the $5,333 average for all wide-release films the last two years).  This opening is slightly off the pace from the most recent Resident Evil films but not a disaster (Afterlife opened 9/2010 with $26.6 million, Extinction opened 9/2007 with $23.7 million, Apocalypse opened 9/2004 with $23.0 million).   Resident Evil: Retribution should leave theaters with a $50 million total domestic gross, closer to Apocalypse ($51.2 million) and Extinction ($51.2 million) than Afterlife ($60.1 million).  However, the real cash will be collected overseas — we’ll see more on that tomorrow.

Finding Nemo 3D from Disney opened with $5.1 million Friday and is on track for $17.5 million Friday-Sunday (the 3.4 weekend multiple is typical for a family film with a heavy reliance on Saturday and Sunday matinee business).  But this opening ($6,030 average at 2,904 theaters) is well below the $25.0 million ShowbuzzDaily forecast.  The 3D golden goose is not the surest of things, after all.  That’s OK with me:  I hate the damn glasses, the low light, the headaches.  Nonetheless, Finding Nemo 3D should still have relatively robust playability and finish with about $70 million total in North America.  Keep in mind, this is well off the pace for the similar 3D re-release one year ago for Lion King: $30.1 million opening weekend and $94.2 million domestic total.

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 $71 million total Friday-Sunday, much better than last week’s miserable $52 million but down 18% from the same weekend last year and down 16% from the average comparable weekend the last four years.

Check back tomorrow morning for updated weekend figures and revised estimates for domestic final grosses.