There haven’t been a lot of Wednesday openings this summer, and even fewer that are relevant to the start of THE SMURFS 2 (Sony), which began with $5.2M yesterday. This Is The End ($7.8M) was aimed at a completely different audience, while the colossal $35M start for Despicable Me 2 was part of a July 4th weekend extravaganza (and the same sort of goes for The Lone Ranger‘s $9.7M on the same day). Smurfs is starting a bit lower than Turbo, which had a $5.6M opening 2 weeks ago in about 300 fewer theatres, and that’s not the best sign, since Turbo is floundering at the box office, and Disney’s Planes is just 9 days away.
In a sense, though, the US box office for Smurfs 2 is just a sideshow to its real story, which will take place overseas. The first Smurfs movie made a decent $142.6M here–and a giant $421.1M internationally, with particular strength in Europe, where the Smurfs franchise originated, as well as China and Brazil. Reports from overseas are so far fragmentary (it had a bigger opening day in the UK than the first movie did), but those are the numbers that will count as the weekend numbers arrive.
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About the Author
Mitch Salem
MITCH SALEM has worked on the business side of the entertainment industry for 20 years, as a senior business affairs executive and attorney for such companies as NBC, ABC, USA, Syfy, Bravo, and BermanBraun Productions, and before that, at the NY law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. During all that, he has more or less constantly been going to the movies and watching TV, and writing about both since the 1980s. His film reviews also currently appear on screened.com and the-burg.com. In addition, he is co-writer of an episode of the television series "Felicity."
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