It’s likely going to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles repeating at #1 this weekend, pulling off something not even Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy could accomplish, but the bigger story might end up being the end of the Expendables franchise.
It seemed as if Lionsgate was promoting this as the final chapter in the dwindling tough guy series, but after an extraordinarily soft $875,000 from Thursday pre-shows, which actually began as early as 7 PM, it looks like the soft lob attempt at going with a PG-13 rating is going to help The Expendables 3. The film went into the weekend tracking for $23 million and both the readers and Laremy went over tracking in their predictions, but there is going to need to be a groundswell at this point for the film to even generate enough word of mouth to hit the tracking number.
Also opening this week you have Let’s Be Cops, which got off to a great start with its Wednesday opening, bringing in $5.2 million. The comedy they wouldn’t even screen for Seattle critics was tracking around $21 million for the weekend and the reader aggregate didn’t shy too far from that, predicting $21.1 million, while Laremy went a bit higher at $25 million.
Finally, the Weinstein’s The Giver seems to be a 50/50 feature that could go either way, but may actually simmer right in the middle. Both the readers and Laremy are right around that $15.5 million mark, about $1.5 million below tracking and the film didn’t suggest it would be fairing much better, bringing in only $750,000 on Thursday night.
I’ve included Laremy’s predictions and the average reader predictions directly below and 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
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – $28.2 million
- The Expendables 3 – $27 million
- Let’s be Cops – $25 million
- The Giver – $15.4 million
Your Predictions
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – $27.3 million
- The Expendables 3 – $24.4 million
- Let’s be Cops – $21.1 million
- The Giver – $15.6 million
