Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 will be in contention for the crown all weekend long. It’s rated PG, and the first one opened at $31.9 million in 2009. It was a simpler time. Adjusted for inflation, this result would actually be less than the first, so I’m factoring in zero sequel bump. I’d say the main factor there is the kids who grew up with Paul Blart, the character, are now too old to care about Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, the movie. Thus, they’ll need to get a whole new crop of families this time around, which means a very similar result. I give them one thing though, they are advertising the hell out of it. $32.4 million is my prediction.
Unfriended is a low-fi horror film that should follow the trend of “just big enough to keep making them”. There’s not a huge amount of precedent for an April horror, films such as Insidious and Evil Dead don’t really give us a good bead on this film’s financial outlook. $15.9 million is where I’m at, two million tickets sold, one out of every 155 Americans will come out to see a horror film on opening weekend.
Next up, let’s talk Monkey Kingdom. This one is about, you know, monkeys and such, and the closest comparables are Bears and African Cats. This feels like an easy call at $6.5 million, that’s just what these films tend to make. Could it surprise and hit $10.6 million like Chimpanzee? Anything is possible.
Finally, one more weekend of Furious 7. The sub-60 percent bleed was good enough, and it will continue to perform this weekend. I know I’m looking at seeing it again, though this time in something called D-Box. 53 percent feels like the dip here, down to $28 million. That’s still great cash for a third weekend, and the $800 million worldwide haul means we’ll be seeing this franchise for a long time to come.
Your turn, get your predictions in and share your thoughts in the comments!
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
