Box Office Discussion Thread

Hey Jeff Bock, why don't you eat a dinosaur sized dick right now?

So, this week's question is: will the combined grosses of JW and Inside Out this weekend equal what JW did by itself last weekend? What about JW, Inside Out, and Dope?

Early (and I do mean early) forecasts call for a $70 million opening for Inside Out and $90-95 million second weekend for Jurassic World, but impressive grosses that really impress me considering both films are huge but aren't cannibalizing each other. Instead, they're both thriving tremendously.

After eye-popping openings the last two weeks, I think we're going to return to earth this weekend with Ted 2. I have no doubt the second go-around of the foul-mouthed talking teddy bear who sounds remarkably like Brain Griffin doing a Boston accent will do very well this weekend. But I don't get the sense that this is a must-see, either. The first one opened this weekend to a surprise $54 million on this weekend three years ago. My guess is that this one will open in the same neighborhood, and be in a tight race for #1 with Jurassic World and Inside Out.

Also opening is Max, the boy-and-his-dog-who-happens-to-be-an-Afghanistan-vet movie. Last year, Earth to Echo opened to $8.3 million over July 4th weekend, and $13 million for the five day after opening on Wednesday. I see somewhat similar numbers for Max, and will say $12 million this weekend.

So it was a battle for first between Jurassic World and Inside Out, with Ted 2 a fairly distant third coming in at $33M.

Jurassic World made just enough this weekend to push it's domestic haul to over $500M in a ridiculous 17 days. It's on.ly sitting at just over $1B worldwide which is a bit of an outlier since only half of it's money is coming from international markets, while most of the other billion dollar movies are earning around 30%-40% domestically, with the international market really being the dominant figure. The Dark Knight is the only billion dollar movie to make more domestically than internationally.

Hmmm, Boxofficemojo still has it behind the Avengers, with the Avengers at $1,518.6M and Furious 7 at $1,511.5M.

Well, "Ted 2" didn't do all that great. And I think you mean Brian Peter Griffin?

I wonder how long it'll take "Inside Out" to ascend to the top 10 highest-grossing films of 2015 so far.

With weekend finals now out, it looks like Inside Out, which was estimated to be slightly behind JW on Sunday afternoon, actually won the weekend by a few hundred thousand. Breathing a sigh of relief is Nia Vardalos, as My Big Fat Greek Wedding keeps it's 13-year-old record of being the highest grossing film never to hit #1 at the weekend box office. Having disappointing 5-day openings was Terminator: Genisys and Magic Mike XXL, both already well off the pace of their predecessors. Both films seem destined to finish short of $100 million domestic, as is Ted 2, which fell 67% over the weekend and has yet to top $60 million.

In comparing the grosses of The Avengers to JW at this point in their runs, the dinos still have a healthy $43 million lead over the superheroes. The 4th weekend marks the first time that the Avengers gross significantly outpaced JW's, $36 million over Memorial Day 2012 vs. $29 million over 4th of July 2015. The $10 million that Avengers grossed on Memorial Day itself also guarantees that it will have its first decisive weekday victory. That said, the Avengers was only $100 million away from its final gross at the end of Memorial Day, and unless JW performs very weakly in July, it should still ultimately gross more, though beating Titanic's final combined number is now looking questionable.

I think Pixels might just bomb this weekend. I just feel like the buzz on it has been nonexistent, though Digital 3D and IMAX 3D priced ticket prices will probably get it to open bigger than Jack & Jill (which had a $25 million opening weekend).

Yeah, Paper Towns won't do Fault In Our Stars business, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it opened above Pixels. 

As it turns out, most people who wanted to see Paper Towns had done so by Friday night, as the film made roughly half of its weekend gross on Friday. That doesn't exactly bode well for its long-term prospects, but according to Mojo, it only cost $12 million to make, so it should at least break even, if not produce a small profit.

Pixels opened considerably better at $24 million, but that's only good for 2nd place behind the second weekend of Ant-Man (itself going down as one of Marvel's weaker performers). There's the possibility that this might just be his last live-action theatrical vehicle for a while. According to IMDB, the only upcoming movies on his slate are Hotel Transylvania 2 and the two Netflix comedies.

Southpaw performed much better than expected, and Mr. Holmes had a solid expansion.

Plus across-the-board bad word of mouth. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it ends up falling short of $60 million domestic.

This coming weekend could be pretty dire as well. Is there anyone all that excited about or interested in seeing The Man From UNCLE? Warners is pushing it pretty hard, but unless there's a lot more pent-up demand than I'm seeing, I'd have to think they'd be satisifed with an opening like Fantastic Four's. Everytime I see an ad, I'm reminded of The Avengers--not the Marvel one, but the ill-fated 1998 adaption of the old British lighthearted spy show. Meanwhile, Universal has Straight Outta Compton, which could shock with an opening in the 30s, 40s, or even 50s. Then again, I thought the same thing last year with Get On Up, which opened to $13.5 million. Compton should do better, since even if "the kids today" don't know about NWA, they've undoubtedly heard of Ice Cube and Dr. Dre. Still, musical biopics are a tricky business, especially one that's probably not going to be a serious Oscar contender.

Nailed it last week! The one thing I underestimated was just how much We Are Your Friends should have actually been titled You Don't Have Any Friends, You Pathetic Loser.

This week should be equally yawn-inducing. For your grandparents, there's A Walk in the Woods, featuring the hottest acting matchup of 1982, Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. I think Redford was robbed of an Oscar (not just the nomination) for All is Lost two years ago, but somehow, I don't think this one is going to be quite as good. Given that this has very little appeal for anyone under 50, and people over 50 rarely rush out and see new movies, I'd say this will be considered a big success if it has $8 million by the end of Monday night.

For action fans, there's The Transporter Refueled, which swaps out Jason Statham for Ed Skrein, who, unless your British and/or a Game of Thrones fan, will probably be unknown to you. Audiences have largely rejected every action movie that's come out since Mission: Impossible in late July, but this one has a name brand and an IMAX release and very little competition, so I suspect it will win the weekend, though with a total south of $20 million.

Dope is getting re-released to capitalize on the success of Straight Outta Compton (good luck with that) and Mistress America is expanding nationwide, but I don't expect either to be much of a factor this weekend.