Despicable Me 2 looks probable to pick up a repeat victory this weekend, making it four in a row for animation after Monsters University‘s two-peat. You can’t stop the children or their parents who buy tickets! However, Despicable Me 2 simply must be more front-loaded than the original, it has done such huge business that it can’t possibly sustain similar carryover numbers. The first effort dropped just under 42 percent, that’s called “word-of-mouth” but I like this one to slip 47 percent, to a number around $44.2 million.
When you’re talking new releases, the topic on everyone’s mind is Pacific Rim. The Brothers Warner have done a few brilliant things (frontloading the RT reviews with positives) and a few not so clever things (releasing a trailer filled with only loud noises). Is this Battlehship all over again? Starship Troopers? The tracking is miserable (see that number below) so I can’t bring myself to go too much higher. Also hurting my prediction? I really didn’t like the movie, so all hopes of objectivity just went right out the window. I settled on $29.3 million and hope to not think of this film very much after this weekend.
But what of the Adam Sandler sequel? Grown Ups 2 is tracking at $40 million, and the original opened at $40 million, so if you were looking for a nice safe number they don’t get much easier than that. For my prediction, $35.3 million made sense. I figure America has wised up a bit since 2010, and yes, that may be the craziest prediction ever. Nonetheless, I look for it to underperform.
Finally, how about one last pile-on session for The Lone Ranger? My “back of the envelope” math suggests they could use another half-billion or so in sales based on that lofty budget, but my Oracle brain predicts they are going to face a withering bleed this weekend. It’s not a pretty picture, folks, and the only hope for the Mouse House is international returns. And maybe a few rides at the theme parks? It’s not an ideal situation, and $13.7 million isn’t going to help much.
How say you? The leaderboard is jam packed, if you get on a run, massive box office glory awaits! Predictions away!
Current Record: 4-7-1 against the wisdom of crowds. Blerg.
Major Theater Chain (MTC) Tracking
Grown Ups 2: $40 million
Pacific Rim: $26 million
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
SIDE NOTE #2: We are working on creating a second leaderboard for the RopeofSilicon Box Office Challenge that will track overall prediction accuracy, so don’t think just because you aren’t scoring big in the points department that your predictions are being overlooked. Get those predictions in and in a couple weeks we’ll begin taking a look at how accurate your predictions are!
