I will leave the majority of the evaluation of this weekend’s numbers for tomorrow morning, but I think we can all agree Disney is loving the fact they’re about to take the #1 slot for the three-day weekend with a film that’s been in theaters for three weeks now.
First, Warner Bros. delivered Hall Pass, the Farrelly brothers’ new film, to 2,950 theaters this weekend and after $4.6 million on Friday should expect about $13 million for the weekend. Ouch. That won’t even match the opening for their much-loathed The Heartbreak Kid from 2007, which only went on to make $36.7 million at the box-office. That number looks like a pipe dream at this point, and it also matches the reported $36 million budget.
The weekend’s other new release comes in all the way down the list at number nine as Nicolas Cage’s Drive Angry earned a paltry $1.6 million, which means more people decided to see Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son on Friday night than suffer through Cage’s latest. Made for a reported $45-50 million this doesn’t bode well for the 3D pic as a $5-6 million weekend looks likely. If I were to guess, no one wanted to pay the 3D ticket markup to see a crap film. Agree? Disagree?
Finally, it looks like it will be a battle for #1 between Disney’s Gnomeo and Juliet and WB’s Unknown with Gnomeo holding the obvious edge as it is winter break for schools and that film has proven to have impressive Saturday and Sunday returns both of its prior weekends.
I will be back on Sunday morning with a full wrap-up, but for now here are the Friday top ten estimates:
- Hall Pass – $4.6 million
- Unknown – $3.9 million
- Just Go With It – $3.2 million
- I Am Number Four – $3.1 million
- Gnomeo and Juliet – $3.1 million
- Justin Bieber: Never Say Never – $2.6 million
- Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son – $2 million
- The King’s Speech – $1.9 million
- Drive Angry – $1.6 million
- The Roommate – $621,000
