Current Streak: 0 Straight Weekends #1 Predicted Correctly
Threat Level to Starting a New Streak: High
Reason: Resident Evil: Afterlife could very easily crush the family dollar, because these 3-D re-releases are devilishly difficult to predict.
In the last ten years we’ve only seen three weekends end up in the $60 million range … and last weekend was one of them. You need a witches’ brew of terribleness, with something like Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star leading the way. Thankfully, we’re through that rough patch, back to real movies meant for actual audiences. Yay!
Finding Nemo 3-D should have the right stuff to take the crown, as it will only need $9,800 per theater to hit a number near $30 million. Looking at the history of 3-D re-releases, you’ve got your Toy Story 2 (opened at $12 million), and you’ve got your Lion King (opened at $30.2 million). It makes sense to go bullish, because audiences haven’t been to the movies in a few weeks, plus school and work have likely settled back into a routine from summer vacation. I’d be surprised if it went as high as $32m, but I do see a fair amount of possible slippage.
Looking down the board, it seems as though Resident Evil: Retribution is the only other candidate for the top spot, the last one opened at nearly $27 million back in September of 2010. Has the franchise lost traction since then? We’ll find out together this weekend, but it wouldn’t be a crazy notion to have it take the weekend crown, though I have it in second by almost $5 million.
Due to the low cumes on the titles in last week’s top ten, nothing even fell 50 percent. Starting from a number closer to zero leaves you less room to falter. It will be the same story this weekend, with the biggest dipper likely being The Words and its “B” CinemaScore.
Other than that, it’s a pretty sleepy time at the box office, but that’s no reason we can’t get our practice reps in. So how say you on the releases or top ten? Predictions away!
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article. All predictions are for the three-day, not the four-day, weekend.
