Current Streak: Two weekends in a row.
Threat Level to Streak Being Broken: A lighter thirty percent.
Reason: This has all the makings of a strange weekend, because the numbers suggest this it will be awful, whereas the history suggests the money has to go somewhere. Still, tracking indicates Bateman and McCarthy should cruise to victory.
MTC Tracking
Identity Thief: $28 million
Side Effects: $13 million
Identity Thief should be your winner this weekend, at least according to the tracking. The issue is just how terrible it looks. I mean, if they couldn’t find a few laughs to show in the trailer, how miserable is the actual movie going to be? Still, we’ve got to use the Grown Ups rule here, which opened at $40 million back in 2010, proving people will see a broad comedy despite appearances and reviews. I’m going significantly lower than tracking here at $22 million, if only because I can’t imagine it getting strong word-of-mouth.
The film I love this weekend is Side Effects. Do I expect folks to see it? Not immediately, but I’d love to bet on it long-term via home video. The Cinemascore is going to be intensely interesting, though for spoilers sake I’ll leave it at that and offer up my $10.9 million prediction.
Warm Bodies should put up a nice holdover number based upon that B+ from audiences, so I’m only dipping it 45 percent. Given it only sits at $26 million worldwide, it still has plenty of work to do, but I’d like to see the plucky little zom-com find success.
Otherwise, Top Gun 3D doesn’t seem to have any momentum, I’ve got it finishing a distant 12th. It’s also only getting 300 theaters, not nearly enough to make a splash.
There isn’t much in the way of narratives to even get into this weekend, though I’ll throw out that I’ve only got the top 12 earning $73 million, where this period last year cleared $191 million. Oddly enough, that weekend also featured a Channing Tatum movie (The Vow). That guy is everywhere!
How say you? Side Effects and Identity Thief calls are what’s needed, break out your spreadsheets and join the fray.
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
