The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug clearly has a 99.99 percent chance of victory this weekend, the only real drama is how it will perform, both against expectations and its predecessor. The tracking says $85.3 million while the first offering, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, raked in $84.6 million on opening weekend. So it would seem there will be no sequel bump for this Hobbit sequel?
I’ll go you one better, because I’m forecasting it will do worse than the original, coming in $82 million. This is a volatile title though, with all kinds of weird variance built in, so your mileage may vary. Personally, I’m fascinated to see how it does.
Now it’s time for us to take a quick look at the other new wide release of the weekend, Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas. On this one I’m going slightly above tracking, partly because when in doubt I always go with the “underserved audience” theory. But this is another tricky one, because a quick look at the Madea films reveals a wide array of opening numbers, bottoming out at $25 million all the way up to $41 million. The last two were at the low end of that spectrum, but they also came out in April and late June, so again, not much help. I wish you luck on your quest, but I’m going with $31.5 million.
We’re going to have to scrounge a little bit to find two more titles, but we might as well start with last weekend’s winner, Frozen. At nearly $200 million worldwide one would think they’d be sitting pretty, but that largish $150 million budget yet looms. Still, I look for another strong weekend out of this popular animation, something around a 37 percent dip, bringing it in at $19.9 million.
Finally, let’s take a look at Out of the Furnace. The first problem is the C+ CinemaScore, which indicates word-of-mouth will be tepid at best. Then again, it didn’t really open to a huge amount, so there clearly will be little front-loading effect. I’m only taking it down 38 percent because older folks tend to miss opening weekends anyway. At $3.2 million I suppose I could be too high, but the money has to go somewhere, doesn’t it? I suppose we’ll find out the answer to that burning question together.
That’s all for this week’s Oracle predictions, get your calls in early and often!
Current Record: 35-56-1 against the wisdom of crowds.
Major Theater Chain (MTC) Tracking
- The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug: $85.3 Million
- Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas: $29.6 Million
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
