Well Man of Steel slowed a little over the weekend as it appeared it might break Toy Story 3‘s $110 million June opening record by $10 million, but a $3 million margin I guess will have to do as the new Superman brought in $113 million over the three-day weekend and a total of $125 million from Thursday to Friday after some early Thursday Walmart and midnight screenings.
The film earned an “A-” CinemaScore, which bodes well for its future prospects, and with a $225 million budget it’s going to need those legs to turn a tidy profit and give WB additional comfort in that sequel they’ve already greenlit.
While Man of Steel‘s number isn’t on par with The Dark Knight ($158 million) or The Dark Knight Rises ($160 million), it’s best to remember those two films started with Batman Begins, which only opened with $48.7 million ($60.3 adjusted for inflation) in 2005. If history tells us anything, the excitement over Zack Snyder‘s Superman franchise rests squarely on the shoulders of Man of Steel 2, much in the way Christopher Nolan‘s Batman franchise didn’t really take off until The Dark Knight.
Curiously enough, if you factor inflation into the equation, the result of this latest Superman film is only about $23 million better than Bryan Singer’s disappointing Superman Returns seven years ago. Comparatively it will be interesting to see how it all turns out as Superman Returns‘ adjusted domestic number is $242.5 million.
The week’s new comedy, This is the End, opened on Wednesday and after bringing in $20.5 million over the three day is now up to $32.8 million.
I should also mention last weekend’s #1 film, The Purge, and its absolute free fall from the top spot as it plummeted 76% to $8.2 million this weekend for a domestic total of $51.8 million. Of course, with a budget of only $3 million you can’t help but marvel at the film’s success. It does make you wonder, though, just how interested will people be in a sequel considering word of mouth clearly isn’t all that good.
Looking over the predictions from Thursday, Laremy took the low end of the spectrum on Man of Steel and his $102 million prediction came up a little short, but on the reader side of things, coltonhaynes22 was dialed in with a $113.8 million prediction. Very nice.
For This is the End a lot of folks were close, but it was John D. and his $22 million prediction that came closest and, unless I’m mistaken, it was the lowest prediction on the board. Not often that happens, but the highest was $36.4 million as many had it hovering right around $30 million. It’s a solid comedy, that’s for sure. I hope a lot of you had a chance to see it.
Outside all the hullabaloo at the top of the box office, Before Midnight shuffled into theaters nationwide and brought home a much weaker than expected $1.5 million. From 893 theaters we’re talking about a soft $1,701 per, which is really too bad. The low budget feature will still be profitable, but people really don’t know what they’re missing out on.
However, judging by the popularity of my post touting the double feature release of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset there are some people getting in on the action. Good on yah, you won’t regret owning those two movies and you certainly won’t regret seeing Before Midnight if you get the opportunity.
Opening in limited release this weekend was Sofia Coppola‘s The Bling Ring in only five theaters as it will go nationwide next weekend and the film mustered up an impressive $210,000 ($42,000 per theater).
Next weekend Man of Steel is likely to lose its #1 status, but will it be Disney and Pixar’s Monsters University or Paramount’s highly marketed, extremely volative World War Z taking the top spot? For that matter, how high will either of these films go?
Pretending Man of Steel drops 52%, you’re looking at a $54.2 million second weekend. The last two Pixar films, Cars 2 and Brave, opened at $66.1m and $66.3m respectively. How much higher can Monsters possibly go?
Then there’s World War Z, which is a complete question mark for me… What do you think?
