2013 05 03 – Iron Man 3

Today we have the biggest opening this year.

HE WILL... HE WILL ROCK YOU... AS WELL AS BOX OFFICE'S RECORDS

This one, Iron Man 3, is an action movie. MPAA rating is PG-13.

First of all -- let's all forget about opening numbers of Iron Man and Iron Man 2. For practical purposes, these movies didn't happen. The only thing that matters is The Avengers movie.

It is beyond any discussion that Iron Man was the brightest Avenger in their first movie. He didn't close the portal (Natasha did), he wasn't the biggest firepower (Hulk was), but it was he who was moving our hearts to tears and our butts to a chair's verge when falling through space without energy supply. Thor's wound? Painful, but moving on. Captain's exhaustion? Well, he will do something. But Stark without energy means 'game over' -- the stake is the highest possible, so we can't afford to not care.

And all the people, who went to see The Avengers, will go now to see Iron Man 3. Ok, maybe not all of them. Maybe only 90 percent. But they will go see the next adventure of Tony Stark. And they will go quite quickly, because in three weeks they go see Star Trek Into Darkness and a week after that, Fast & Furious 6. So ten weekends of screenings in 1000+ theaters will be probably squeezed to seven-eight. And that clearly means a higher opening.

I understand that a possibility of a one-hero movie topping an ensemble movie is hard to swallow for critics. But this is the world where real people want to get a great experience for their money, again. They don't care about records or a good night's sleep of reviewers. Iron Man 3 is the most massive promise of that in theaters this summer (and possibly, this year), and no-one with a right mind will miss this.

This is the reason I'm shooting at an opening of 210 mln. Since the official theater count hasn't been revealed yet, this may mean 4200 theaters with $50,000 per theater or $47,800 per theater. So, the shoot with precise mix I will post on Friday.

UPDATE: The official theater count on BoxOfficeMojo stopped on 4253, so my matching dollar number is 49,377.

Shots:

210 mln  --  Mario Ludwinski, USBOPredictions2013  (4253 theaters., $49,377 per theater)
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189 mln  --  Damon Houx, ScreenCrave
186,8 mln  --  Laremy Legel, RopeOfSilicon  (4150 theaters, $45,012 per theater)
182 mln  --  Donald Shanahan, Examiner
177 mln  --   Ray Subers, BoxOfficeMojo
174,14 mln  --  the final weekend number of the movie  (4253 theaters, $40,946 per theater)
175 mln  --  C.S. Strowbridge, The-Numbers
168 mln  --  Bill Bonfanti, FilmGo
165 mln  --  Gitesh Pandya, BoxOfficeGuru
164 mln  --  HSX
162 mln  --  Movie Critic Assassins, BreitBart
160 mln  --  Perri Nemiroff, Shockya
157 mln  --  BoxOffice staff
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