Exodus: Gods and Kings is your clear winner this week. They are marketing the living hades out of it, and best of all they are completely lying about what this movie is. What it is… a mess. The ads make it look like an action movie, but there’s not all that much action in the first half. It’s also long, and the recent history of “ancient action” isn’t too solid. Look no further than Noah, 300: The Prequel, and Wrath of the Titans. This will make money, because it’s the only new wide release, but it won’t make silly money. I’ve given it $8k per theater to bring it in at $26.4 million.
Chris Rock‘s Top Five is only getting 975 theaters, or else it might have been an actual contender. I have it coming in higher per theater than Exodus: Gods and Kings, but it won’t be nearly enough. This is also being mis-marketed as a comedy, when in real life it’s Birdman light (or diet Birdman) – it features Chris Rock comedy, but really it’s about a typecast fella coming to terms with that dynamic. Solid film, and audiences will support it, but only to the tune of $11.7 million.
How many weekends have we predicted The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1? A 55 percent drop leaves it at $9.8 million. At $594 million worldwide this can only be considered a financial failure, people seem to be sitting out this particular part one of two. Was it the overall film quality? Or are they waiting for the other shoe to drop? This phenomenon did happen with Potter and Twilight as well, at least domestically, but it wasn’t so dramatic.
Penguins of Madagascar was another disaster. It’s worth noting just how dismal this season has been. Only about 50 seats per showing time are being sold, even for a film like Hunger Games last weekend. That’s a huge amount of empty capacity for a movie that was expecting big things. Same goes for Penguins of Madagascar, a budget of $132 million and box office receipts of $144 million. That’s a bad situation. $5.5 million this weekend won’t help matters too much either.
Your turn, we’re almost done with the year!
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
