This weekend we have three openings. They start on Wednesday, but all shots cover a typical weekend of Friday-Sunday.
TUESDAY: My shots per theater!
FRIDAY: All shots!
MONDAY: Official numbers!
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JESUS WAS BORN IN BETLEHEM, IN A MENGER, #OUTOFHOSPITALDELIVERY
This one, Black Nativity, is a PG musical movie, from Fox.
If you think there is nothing new in this world, you may be right. For a brief moment I thought I will be shooting in the dark for this movie, but last year we got Joyful Noise to refer to. It opened with $ 4104 per theater. It got the same religion, singing, and life-is-hard themes, with Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton as two leads.
Black Nativity surely puts bigger names and faces up front: Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Hudson.
But the story vehicle is less accessible. Joyful Noise was driven by a competition theme: there was a personal level of it (two friends-rivals for a leading chair of local choir), and a global level of it (choirs compete for the title of the best one). Women audience could relate to heroines. Black Nativity's story is centered on a teenage boy, on his struggle with life. I don't know how much interested in singing are today's male teenagers, but I know both PS4 and Xbox One have just entered shops. It is a killer competition.
So I lower my shot in comparison to Joyful Noise.
Shots (Friday-Sunday):
$ 13 mln -- Ray Subers, BoxOfficeMojo
$ 11 mln -- SaberToothDragon, BoxOfficeFrontier
$ 10 mln -- ThisIsNotMyName, BoxOfficePredictionsOnline
$ 10 mln -- Edward Douglas, ComingSoon
$ 9,9 mln -- C.S. Strowbridge, The-Numbers (just under $ 10M)
$ 9,1 mln -- Mitch Metcalf, ShowBuzzDaily
$ 9 mln -- Gitesh Pandya, BoxOfficeGuru
$ 8,2 mln -- Box Office team
$ 6,8 mln -- Laremy Legel, RopeOfSilicon
$ 5,28 mln -- Mario Ludwinski, USBOPredictions2013 (1516 theaters, $ 3482 per theater)
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$ 3,88 mln -- the official weekend number of the movie (1516 theaters, $ 2559 per theater)
Damon Houx, ScreenCrave, Sensei White Lotus, BreitBart, Perri Nemiroff, Shockya, Andy Burns, BiffBamPop, didn't post a number for this one.
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THE SNOWMAN WHO SNORTED TOO MUCH SNOW
This one, Frozen, is a PG adventure movie, from Walt Disney.
I saw the trailer a couple of times. I feel something is wrong, but I can't really put my finger on it.
On the plus side:
* no competition -- kids forgot Cloudy 2,
* season match -- this snow intensity is still ahead of us, but a lot of us wait eagerly for it, this movie is as close substitution as can be,
* Tangled lookalike -- if kids have any ounce of visual memory, they will links these two movies and drag their parents into theaters,
* Olaf, the overacting snowman -- he walks and speaks as if he snorted too much snow, these characters attract kids' attention (he also took center place on the poster).
On the minus side:
* opponent is not present -- the scary snow witch doesn't appear much in the trailer, it is rather a fight against nature (snow, blizzard, wolves) than her, which is a weak source of story tension,
* Prince Charming vs A Peasant with a Golden Heart -- it looks like a filler character than a serious rival to the heroine's heart
* she's no Merida -- her name isn't told in the trailer, so we have no reason to put up our liking for her, it is a bad sign for any hero.
All pluses look to me like market factors, all minuses look like movie factors. When comes to opening weekends, market factors are more important. When comes to next weekend's legs, or reviews, movie factors are more important.
Tangled opened with $ 13,535 per theater. Brave opened with $ 15,927 per theater. I think Frozen will open with something in the middle of these two numbers, closer to Tangled.
Shots (Friday-Sunday):
$ 66,71 mln -- the official weekend number of the movie (3742 theaters, $ 17,828 per theater)
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$ 52,76 mln -- Mario Ludwinski, USBOPredictions2013 (3742 theaters, $ 14,100 per theater)
$ 50 mln -- SaberToothDragon, BoxOfficeFrontier
$ 47 mln -- Box Office team
$ 45,5 mln -- Mitch Metcalf, ShowBuzzDaily
$ 45 mln -- C.S. Strowbridge, The-Numbers
$ 45 mln -- Gitesh Pandya, BoxOfficeGuru
$ 45 mln -- Andy Burns, BiffBamPop
$ 44,7 mln -- Ray Subers, BoxOfficeMojo
$ 44,2 mln -- Edward Douglas, ComingSoon
$ 40 mln -- ThisIsNotMyName, BoxOfficePredictionsOnline
$ 29,9 mln -- Laremy Legel, RopeOfSilicon
Damon Houx, ScreenCrave, Sensei White Lotus, BreitBart, Perri Nemiroff, Shockya, didn't post a number for this one.
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I SAW THIS 70 YEARS AGO, STARRING GARY COOPER
This one, Homefront, is an R action movie, from Open Road.
70 years ago westerns were the best movies possible. John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda: these names pulled people into theaters. Small and lawless western towns acted as witnessed to conflicts, ambitions, dreams, betrayals, rises and falls of the human nature.
In 2013 this chair is occupied by a genre of superhero movies. Iron Man, Superman, Thor, Wolverine, Professor Xavier, Magneto: they serve as poster boys for modern characterizations of human struggle in life. As older heroes possessed extraordinary skills in shooting, riding, lasso throwing, heroes of now use armors, hammers powered by a four-dimensioned source, and DNA mutations.
This parallel shows that in year 2013 there is no room for a typical drama movies without superhero elements. Openings of such movies as Promised Land, Broken City, Dead Man Down, Prisoners, Escape Plan, Runner, Runner, and my favorite flop of the year -- The Last Stand, didn't cross $ 10 mln. No one simply cared.
The same fate awaits for Homefront. It would be a great western: the hero stands against local big guys and burns down their cow branding counterfeit business. Now it is just a meh proposition, with too small value to offer.
Shots (Friday-Sunday):
$ 10 mln -- Andy Burns, BiffBamPop
$ 9 mln -- Laremy Legel, RopeOfSilicon
$ 8,9 mln -- Ray Subers, BoxOfficeMojo
$ 8,5 mln -- Edward Douglas, ComingSoon
$ 8 mln -- C.S. Strowbridge, The-Numbers
$ 8 mln -- Gitesh Pandya, BoxOfficeGuru
$ 8 mln -- SaberToothDragon, BoxOfficeFrontier
$ 7,8 mln -- Mitch Metcalf, ShowBuzzDaily
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$ 7,6 mln -- Box Office team
$ 6,97 mln -- the official weekend number of the movie (2570 theaters, $ 2712 per theater)
$ 6,51 mln -- Mario Ludwinski, USBOPredictions2013 (2570 theaters, $ 2531 per theater)
Damon Houx, ScreenCrave, Sensei White Lotus, BreitBart, Perri Nemiroff, Shockya, ThisIsNotMyName, BoxOfficePredictionsOnline, didn't post a number for this one.
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