Pain and Gain feels — *technical term alert* — “buzzy”. I’m well above the tracking with my $23 million call, but the money has to go somewhere. Last year this weekend made $110 million, and I’ve only got this weekend at $85 million. So then, what do you like?
Can Tom Cruise and Oblivion put up a decent holdover number? Or perhaps you love the star power of Robert De Niro in The Big Wedding? This whole thing is a quagmire, but I refuse to let my streak go down without a fight.
The top three films of April, historically, are action movies. Fast Five‘s $86 million is completely out of reach for Pain & Gain, mostly because the former was rated PG-13 and the fifth version of a wildly popular franchise. But they do have The Rock in common! He’s worth at least $1 million all by his lonesome. Then you’ve got the Michael Bay pedigree. Adjusted for inflation, he’s never had a film open below $20 million, so I can’t predict he’ll start now. Oddly enough, my $23 million call could be really low, that’s how much wiggle room / variance there is in this weekend. Get out your dartboard.
We should also break down The Big Wedding. That’s My Boy is a really good comp in terms of the vulgarity presented, only this is being marketed in the bright-eyed, typical rom-com manner. So any couples who go to this stand a fair chance of being confused, and the above 60 crowd may actually walk away offended. That means the holdover number will be brutal, and this weekend we can expect some serious backsliding come Sunday as word of mouth sets in. So if you’re predicting this to do anything at all this weekend you’re a braver soul than me.
Enough equivocation, how say you? If you can nail these two predictions you deserve a medal, though thankfully this is the last tough weekend we’ll have for a few months.
Current Streak: Eleven weekends in a row.
Chances of Streak Being Broken: Twenty percent.
Reason: The tracking is really close, and older adults haven’t been marketed to in ages.
Major Theater Chain (MTC) Tracking
Pain and Gain: $14 million
The Big Wedding: $13 million
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
