Daily Box Office Analysis

By David Mumpower

August 14, 2012

At least this isn't as horrifying as naked Kathy Griffin in About Schmidt.

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You have heard the news by now. Batman has been dethroned by a pair of new releases. With The Dark Knight Rises no longer holding the top spot on the box office charts, there are a couple of new titles to discuss. One is a reboot while the other is a new property but both feature familiar faces.

2012 has been kind to Jeremy Renner. On New Year’s Day, the rising actor co-starred in the number one film in the land, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. That title wound up earning $209.4 million domestically and almost $700 million worldwide. The $209 million alone represented by far the biggest hit of Renner’s career over The Town’s global earnings of $156.8 million. Note: Renner also had a role in 2003’s SWAT, which grossed $207.2 million worldwide, but he was not the draw there.

The fourth Mission Impossible title was number one for eight days in January although technically none of the weekends. His next release was called The Avengers. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Far and away the number one movie of 2012, The Avengers spent three weekends in first place. It was the top North American film for 21 consecutive days. We are 227 days into 2012. Jeremy Renner has already starred in three number one films. These titles have led the box office for 33 days and four, arguably five weekends.

Jeremy Renner is officially a superstar.




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Alas, The Bourne Legacy will be his least popular movie of the year. After a weekend estimate of $40 million, the posting of actuals downgraded Bourne 4 to $38,142,825. Its Monday revenue of $3,857,355 brings it domestic total up to $42,000,180. Here are the metrics that matter. The movie declined 33% from Saturday to Sunday, which quickly was blamed on the Olympics. Well, there were no Olympics yesterday (*sigh*), yet the movie fell 60% from Sunday.

How alarming is this? Let me use another recent example to make the point. Magic Mike opened to a similar $39.1 million. It fell 26% from Saturday to Sunday and then 40% from Sunday to Monday. Yes, Magic Mike, a weekend movie if ever there were one, demonstrated better holdover appeal during its first four days. While Magic Mike’s first set of weekdays included the July 4th holiday and thereby inflated box office a bit, this trend is still alarming.

The Bourne Legacy has dropped 73% from Saturday to Monday. These are tell-tale signs of frontloading. To wit, Total Recall is wildly frontloaded thus far. Its Saturday to Monday drop was “only” 68%. Its Saturday-Sunday decline was 24% and its Sunday-Monday decline was 58%. All these metrics indicate that The Bourne Legacy is losing steam at a faster rate than a movie that fell 69% last weekend. I do not expect this trend to continue, but this is an issue we definitely need to track. At this point, The Bourne Legacy is not a mortal lock to earn $100 million. Even if it does, $125 million appears to be a best case scenario thus far.


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