It’s the first official weekend of 2015 as J T was the undisputed victor of 2014, winning not only in points with 97, but ending the year with an astonishing 81.976% accuracy. Will he repeat again this year? Time to find out, and J T, be sure and send an email to [email protected] so you can claim your prize (or prizes is more like it since you won for both points and accuracy). Congratulations, and let’s get this new year started!
First off, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies gets the three-peat this weekend, but baaaaaarely. As in, get out your coin flip. This finale is tracking about 20 percent higher after two weeks, at least domestically. $21.3 million is my call, enough to win what will be a heavily spread out New Year’s holiday weekend.
The Into the Woods budget has been listed around $50 million by Wikipedia, and after getting to $80 million this weekend it looks like the prospects are relatively decent. Another $45 million either internationally or on home video seems extremely likely, and family films have much more pull as couples and sports fans burrow into the couch. My prediction is a flat $21 million, so close to the top that Meryl and Anna can taste it.
Unbroken debuted to a decent A- Cinemascore, so even though the holdover numbers bear no relation to last week due to holiday trends, it should holdover just fine. On the sad side, with no Oscar push in site and very bleak international hopes, this will probably end up as a modest financial loser. The $20.3 million added to this weekend won’t be enough to move the dial there.
Lastly, the only new wide release, The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death. Do people really want to start their 2015 with a horror? I think it’s nicely placed in terms of demographic, but probably poorly placed in terms of date. The previous edition came out in February, so this will be an interesting case study. I can’t go any higher than $13 million. How about you?
Your turn, start the year off right!
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
