Noah is your clear box-office winner this weekend, on that front we can all agree. But above tracking? Or in line with? Hard to say. It’s being marketed as if it’s Wrath of the Titans, which clearly can’t be accurate given Darren Aronofsky directed. In terms of quality, you can see some brilliance, but also plenty of studio interference as well. I think. Regardless, this will be an epic CinemaScore, either an A or B-, I just can’t tell which. As for a prediction, I’m going slightly under tracking at $37.4 million. After losing to the wisdom of crowds by a paltry $200,000 on Divergent I’m ready for some fresh pain again this weekend.
Let’s do religious themed round #2 with God’s Not Dead. The easy comparison here is Son of God, which came out of the gates crushing it before facing a withering 60 percent dip in its sophomore weekend. It would seem that YA, superheroes, action, and religious films now all share a massive front-loading concern. Plus, this may be the only time in history we’ll see the church dollar segmented! I’m grabbing that 60 percent drop to land at $5.5 million.
After Noah, the other new wide release is Sabotage. I skipped the screening figuring I would just live my life and check it out this weekend. Poor tracking, no reviews (as of this writing), there’s very little reason to hope here. In a month no one will even remember this film, or that I put it at $8.7 million. Sad stuff.
Finally, let’s talk The Grand Budapest Hotel. It’s getting more theaters! It’s beloved! I can tell you I’ve personally purchased three tickets for it, two for me, and one for a special lady. Loved it both times. I’m projecting it to have a big week, my $13 million call would mean Wes Anderson is picking up new fans because I don’t believe he’s ever had a film with a double-digit weekend. I could be wrong, but take a look, the highest I could find was $8.5 million on The Royal Tenenbaums. Am I being hopelessly optimistic? We’ll find out together, after you make your predictions, get in there and mix it up.
Oh, and if you want to toss out a prediction for Divergent in the comments it won’t be official for the Box Office Leaderboard, but it could prove interesting to see how you think it will do in its second weekend and why.
Current Record: 10-34 against the wisdom of the crowds.
Major Theater Chain (MTC) Tracking
- Noah: $40.5 million
- Sabotage: $8.3 million
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
