Captain America: Winter Soldier will certainly win, but what sort of dollars are we looking at here? The second Thor opened at $85 million, but of course Iron Man 2 hit over $125 million in May of 2010. My projection is just under nine figures, at $97.5 million. My reasoning? Well, the trailer says it all, it’s the first film in about four months to capture the interest of the everyday Joe (or Jill). The Wrap says this thing is gunning for $90 million, but I wasn’t able to find tracking. Sufficed to say I’m going well over that. Join me!
Noah will be twerking with a “C” CinemaScore this weekend, which never bodes well. Now there would be an interesting project, which matters more, RT for opening weekend or CinemaScore for the sophomore one? Someone get my intern on that. I have it dipping 55 percent, and there’s not a whole lot to say after that. Critics seemed to dig it (though not this guy) and general audiences seemed to have missed it. How about $19.7 million? That feels right.
Riddle me this: if 13 to 15 million people watch “Game of Thrones” is that going to hurt any films? Or what about The Final Four on Saturday? I don’t see either of those hitting any of the top three directly in the “demo” face, but it’s not going to help matters either. Divergent hasn’t done anything overseas yet, but that’s where this battle is going to be fought and won or lost. They could use a solid $150 million internationally to bake in a profit this time around, but that sequel is happening regardless. The lure of the sequel bump, look no further than our first title on the board. For this version, the slide all the way down to $11.8 million continues this weekend.
Finally, there’s not a huge fourth title, so let’s look at God’s Not Dead again. It completely zigged against my “large-ish drop” reasoning of last weekend, and so we’ve got to assume that this one isn’t front-loaded in the way that previous religious films have been. This one has staying power. So let’s swing again with a 30 percent drop, 25 percent worse than last weekend, but still really respectable overall. I haven’t seen a budget here, but my guess is they are doing all right by Freestyle Releasing. Expect to see a few more of these every year, Hollywood is nothing if not copycat.
That’s all for now. Your turn! Summer blockbuster season, whoop whoop!
Current Record: 10-37-1 against the wisdom of the crowds.
Major Theater Chain (MTC) Tracking
- Captain America: Winter Soldier: N/A
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
