The Green Hornet currently has the largest opening weekend in 2011 at $33.5 million, but after the $9.5 million Rango took in on Friday it has the potential of reaching $40 million should families support it the way they have supported Gnomeo and Juliet the last three weekends. An additional $30 million over the next two days is likely a bit out of the film’s reach, as I would expect it to land somewhere around $35 million, but it’s worth a mention.
I really enjoyed Rango (read my review here) and hope it continues to excel because it will prove animated films, and films in general, don’t need to be all about appealing to the lowest common denominator to make some money at the box-office. It shows as long as some thought is put into a script and story people will show up and recommend the film to others based solely on the fact it’s a good film. If studios catch on, we may actually start seeing better films in the future. That’s probably a pipe dream, but let’s be optimistic this weekend shall we?
In second is another good film with The Adjustment Bureau pulling down $6.7 million on its way to a potential $20 million weekend, a three-day estimate I don’t think is too lofty should word of mouth be as good as I think it should be.
The new releases continued to top this week’s box-office as CBS Films’s Beastly took home a modest $3.5 million, which will likely turn into $10 million by Sunday. Not bad, but I still don’t think anything that’s happened over the last month insinuates Alex Pettyfer is going to be a star. Sure, he has two films in the top ten, but if you were to poll people on the street how many people would actually know who he is?
You have to go down to number ten for the fourth new release of the week as Universal’s long-delayed Take Me Home Tonight managed $1.2 million on its way to a likely $3.5 million weekend.
Before I give you the top ten, one comment I found particularly interesting from BoxOfficeGuru.com’s Gitesh Pandya on Twitter was that the big loser this weekend was Best Picture winner The King’s Speech, citing Charlie Sheen’s media domination as grabbing the spotlight from the film, hurting its chances to reach a wider audience. Not a bad theory as the film brought in $1.6 million on Friday and is looking at about $6-7 million for the weekend. Good numbers, but even RopeofSilicon Box-Office Oracle, Laremy Legel, predicted a $10+ million weekend for the Oscar champ. That’s going to be a tough number to hit.
Check out the rest of the Friday box-office top ten below and I will be back on Sunday with a complete wrap-up.
- Rango – $9.5 million
- The Adjustment Bureau – $6.7 million
- Beastly – $3.5 million
- Hall Pass – $2.7 million
- Just Go With It – $1.9 million
- Unknown – $1.8 million
- The King’s Speech – $1.6 million
- I Am Number Four – $1.6 million
- Gnomeo and Juliet – $1.5 million
- Take Me Home Tonight – $1.2 million
