Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
December 13, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The Biblical epic earned $8.6 million on Friday, which is more than enough for first place on Friday but feels like simply an opening act for the upcoming holiday releases, starting with The Hobbit finale next weekend. March 2014's Noah, another adaptation of a Bible story, started with $15.1 million on its way to a $43.7 million weekend. If Exodus were to duplicate that, it would end up with a $24.7 million weekend and that sounds just right. It’s not the best of weekends and it will not be much of a player during the holiday box office season.
Top Five
[bp:1310_]Chris Rock[/bp]’s Top Five earned $2.5 million on Friday. Considering that it’s in under 1,000 theaters, this is quite good. It’s a likely candidate to get buried in the avalanche of holiday releases, but given the solid reviews, that would be a shame. A weekend of $7.5 million is just fine and it would be nice to see it stay in the conversation once we hit the strongest box office days of the year.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1
Mockingjay’s three week run at the top ends as it drops another 43% from last Friday to $3.8 million. Again we compare it to Catching Fire at this same point, which had $347.9 million in the bank as opposed to Mockingjay’s $267.9 million. A fourth weekend of $12.6 million brings it closer to $300 million but there’s not a lot of gas left in the tank.