On Thursday night, Fox’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes opened to the tune of a rather impressive $4.1 million, impressive due to the fact it’s not getting an IMAX release and screenings didn’t begin until 10PM rather than 8PM or even earlier for several other new summer releases. This is also a large increase compared to 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which opened to $1.3 million on its first Thursday night before going on to a $54 million opening weekend.
It’s still hard to determine just where exactly the film will land in terms of the three-day, but Laremy’s $69 million prediction seems low as does the readers’ $72.1 million aggregate. I think we might be looking at a $75+ million opening here, which is good news for Fox as it turns out the budget on this one is $170 million, $77 million more than the studio paid to make Rise. Thousands of photo-realistic digital apes will do that to a production budget.
Elsewhere in prediction land, I’m sorry, I just can’t be bothered to care. The numbers are below for both Laremy’s predictions and the average reader predictions. Hopefully things will be more interesting over the weekend as I’m not only interested to see how Dawn ends up doing, but how Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood performs in limited release.
If there’s enough to talk about I’ll post an article on Saturday concerning Friday’s numbers, if not, I’ll be back on Sunday with box office estimates. To see Laremy’s full list of predictions and all 90 reader predictions for this weekend click here.
Laremy’s Predictions
- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – $69 million
- Tammy – $8.5 million
- Deliver Us from Evil – $5 million
- Earth to Echo – $4.9 million
Your Predictions
- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – $72.1 million
- Tammy – $9 million
- Earth to Echo – $4.89 million
- Deliver Us from Evil – $4.8 million
