Weekend Box-Office: ‘The Grey’ Storms #1 at the Box-Office
By
Brad Brevet
The box-office continues to play better than a year ago as yet another film overperforms at the box-office with Joe Carnahan’s The Grey taking #1 while Underworld Awakening didn’t drop as far as most expected. Let’s take a closer look.
Laremy predicted the #1 movie correctly 3 Weeks In A Row
Huge opening for The Grey, but last night I popped over to IMDb to see what users over there had to say and there were, surprisingly, a lot of negative comments particularly aimed at the film’s ending and what many felt were misleading trailers.
My largest complaint with this film was that it was a bit too long and tried a little too hard to earn sentimentality that was already there. In fact, I thought the ending was one of the best parts and couldn’t have imagined it ending any other way. That said, after a knockout $20 million opening on a $32 million budget I wonder how this film will end up doing next weekend.
I can understand people being upset over the trailers and assume many that saw Haywire and The American back in 2010 felt very much the same way. The Grey isn’t the Liam Neeson vs. wolves feature the trailers promised. Then again, it isn’t without its moments of violence. That R-rating is well earned.
As for predictions, Laremy undershot this result while readers “chriscarmichael” and “Doozie” were $1 million off each, with chris getting the “Price is Right” win as Doozie went over. Congrats to you both nonetheless.
Weekend: $20 million RottenTomatoes Score:79% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #1 and his prediction of $17.1 million was $2.9m off for a percentage error of 14.5%.
Screen Gems has got to be happy with this result as most eyed a much larger second weekend drop for the front-loaded return of Kate Beckinsale as the lycan hunting vampire Selene. Instead, a 50% drop suggests it wasn’t front-loaded at all though that $70 million budget still looms. The film, however, will likely do well on DVD and Blu-ray and it’s already added $13.4 million overseas where previous installments have all made around $45 million. I expect we’ll be seeing more from this franchise if they can talk Beckinsale into coming back once again.
Weekend: $12.5 million (-50.8% drop) / Cume: $45.1 million / RottenTomatoes:30% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #5 with $10.88 million, which is $1.62m off for a 12.96% error.
They didn’t screen this one for critics here in Seattle and judging by the 3% RottenTomatoes rating I understand why. Lionsgate used Groupon to bolster buzz for this film and as a result the $6 coupon rate is being added to weekend estimates at full-price ticket costs, artificially inflating the film’s reported gross. I haven’t seen Groupon sales numbers so I don’t know how much that mattered, but it could suggest this film was a pretty big bomb.
As for predictions, Laremy was almost right on and mfan wasn’t too far off either with an $11.475 million prediction.
Weekend: $11.7 million / RottenTomatoes:3% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #3 with $11.34 million, which is $0.36m off for a 3.08% error.
Red Tails is still performing well with only a 45.5% drop from last weekend.
Weekend: $10.4 million (-45.5% drop) / Cume: $33.7 million / RottenTomatoes:35% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #4 with $11.26 million, which is $0.86m off for a 8.27% error.
Yesterday I said this movie was a bomb with such a paltry opening on a $42 million budget and using Living Social to bolster its box-office numbers. I guess I may be jumping the gun a bit, but this definitely isn’t an encouraging opening as Laremy clearly overshot on his prediction as did many of the readers on Thursday with Dennis being the only reader to predict a number below double digits with an $8 million prediction that was almost spot on.
Weekend: $8.3 million / RottenTomatoes:24% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #2 with $12 million, which is $3.7m off for a 44.58% error.
Following its surprise Best Picture nomination, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close didn’t add any theaters, remaining in 2,630 across the nation, but be it word of mouth or the Oscar bump, the film only dropped 32% and is now up to $21.1 million overall.
Weekend: $7.1 million (-32.4% drop) / Cume: $21.1 million / RottenTomatoes:45% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #6 with $8.03 million, which is $0.93m off for a 13.1% error.
The Descendants saw the largest Oscar bump, but then again it did add 1,441 theaters so I would hope that number would go up as it enjoyed a 176.1% increase over last weekend.
Weekend: $6.55 million (176.1% increase) / Cume: $58.8 million / RottenTomatoes:90% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #7 with $7.9 million, which is $1.35m off for a 20.61% error.
Marky Mark’s Contraband is a win. It has now more than doubling its $25 million budget domestically. I, however, will never understand budgets as I can’t seem to figure out why this would only cost $25 million and The Grey costs $34. I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation, but I just don’t get it.
Weekend: $6.5 million (-46.7% drop) / Cume: $56.4 million / RottenTomatoes:48% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #9 with $6.5 million and he was exactly right!
I feel silly presenting a video from TMZ, but one of their camera guys confronted Steven Soderbergh in an airport baggage claim and when asked how Haywire was doing he replied “Terrible” in an interesting moment of honesty. Then again, with a budget of $23 million and taking in $15.2 million so far, I don’t think the film is doing all that bad considering it’s not exactly a movie for your average general audience.
What’s most annoying about the video are the TMZ morons and their bit of Soderbergh commentary afterwards so I do suggest you watch this video only if you’re able to brush that kind of stuff off.
Weekend: $4 million (-55.6% drop) / Cume: $15.2 million / RottenTomatoes:80% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #10 with $5.05 million, which is $1.05m off for a 26.25% error.
In other Oscar bump news, The Artist gained 235 theaters and brought in $3.3 million for the weekend and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo added 315 theaters and the Oscar nomination leader ended the three-day with $2.2 million.
Additionally, Albert Nobbs opened in limited release, bringing in $773,000 from 245 theaters.
Next weekend sees the release of Big Miracle, Chronicle and The Woman in Black, all three looking like films that have the potential of doing quite well at the box-office, serving a variety of audiences. I know I am anxious to see both Chronicle and The Woman in Black.
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