Unfortunately, the Weekend Warrior blog has been fairly dormant this week only because I’ve been so busy working on features for the next week and half leading up to Thanksgiving (lots of interviews coming!) but I do want to start doing Saturday updates before our normal weekend box office report on Sundays, just to give you some idea where we’re at.
Surprise, surprise… Relativity Media are on their way to having their biggest hit to date with Tarsem’s Greek Gods epic Immortals, which pulled together some of the ideas behind Warner Bros. hits 300 and The Clash of the Titans to create something to appeal to the same crowd. We thought earlier this week that cynical males might be too busy with hot new video games like “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” to go to the movies, but nope! Immortals reportedly pulled in $15 million on Friday (including $1.4 million in midnights) and is on its way to $35 million or more for the weekend.
Not sure how anyone could doubt Adam Sandler and Sony who have one of the best comedy track records out there, but Sandler’s abysmally reviewed crossdressing comedy Jack and Jill was able to pull in an estimated $10 million yesterday. Even though a lot of that may be attributed to the 60% of nationwide schools that were out of session for Veteran’s Day, that’s still looking like it should end up somewhere between $26 and 28 million for the weekend, even more if families still see it as a viable choice today.
It’s going to give DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots a run for second place as that took in an estimated $9 million on Friday and could also end up somewhere between $25 and 28 million depending on how much that amount was exaggerated by the holiday.
Despite their Oscar problems this past week, Brett Ratner and Eddie Murphy’s Tower Heist (Oh, yeah, Ben Stiller is in it, too) had a decent hold in its second Friday, bringing in $4.9 million, which we can see ending up somewhere around $15 to 16 million for the weekend. That’s down roughly 38% from last week which isn’t bad considering the comedy competition.
Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the controversial former FBI director, expanded into roughly 1,900 theaters on Friday after a two-day platform release, and it made roughly $4.25 million, which is pointing to a first weekend around the $11 to 12 million which is roughly where Eastwood’s movies open these days. That’s a pretty decent per-theater average for the weekend if it does hold up well through Sunday.
Check back tomorrow for our official box office wrap-up for the weekend with the official studio estimates (rather than our projections.)
