Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
May 3, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Another superhero sequel was trotted out on Friday, with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hoping to duplicate the feat of the Captain America sequel from a few weeks ago. After Spider-Man launched on this weekend in 2002 as the first movie to earn $100 million in a weekend (a feat that has now happened 26 times), Spider-Man 3 seemingly killed the franchise despite grossing $389 million, necessitating the 2012 reboot as The Amazing Spider-Man, which finished with $268 million. We’ve established with other franchises that a reboot gives back some amount of box office in exchange for future returns (the textbook example will forever be Batman Begins to The Dark Knight) but this is also the fifth Spider-Man movie in 12 years. With generally below average reviews, it’s not quite clear if the diminishing returns pattern would continue as superhero fatigue has finally set in or if we’d see an an uptick in Andrew Garfield’s second go as Spidey.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 earned $35.5 million on Friday, with $8.7 million of that coming from late Thursday showings. It's the second highest Friday of the year, behind Captain America: The Winter Solider. The last Spider-Man entry opened on a Tuesday over the July 4th holiday and makes for a pretty terrible comparison, but it’s worth noting that this is nearly identical to the $35 million The Amazing Spider-Man took in in its first day.
With its similar Friday, The Winter Solider actually makes for the best comparison. That began with $37 million, with $10.2 coming on Thursday night. The other Marvel property then went on to a $95 million weekend. For internal multiplier purposes, that’s a 3.17 without the Thursday figure and a 2.57 with it. Applying these figures to Spider-Man gives you somewhere between $90 to $93 million. I’ll go with the lower end there and give it $90.4 million on the weekend. Between Captain America, Spider-Man and X-Men coming in a few weeks, it’s safe to say comic properties are still hotter than ever in 2014.
Notable Holdovers
Last weekend’s surprise hit The Other Woman drops 48% to $4.8 million, which isn’t too much to complain about. It took advantage of the quiet before the superhero storm and found a niche. A second weekend of $14.4 million is fine.
In the face of Spider-Man, Captain America: The Winter Solider drops 53% from last week to $2.1 million. While Cap makes an excellent comparison to the opening of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I’m sure Sony is hoping it doesn’t follow a similar trajectory as it means both films would end up around $250 million. While that’s a good increase for Captain America, that’s less than the Spider-Man reboot took in. Give it another $7.4 million.
Lastly, Rio 2 becomes the 7th 2014 film to cross $100 million as it earned $1.7 million on Friday. Look for a weekend of $7.1 million.