Daily Box Office Analysis

By David Mumpower

August 29, 2012

That slogan tells me a lot about who he is.

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For the 12th consecutive day, The Expendables 2 was the number one film in North America. The bigger story occurred a bit further down the chart as 2016: Obama’s America failed to maintain the momentum needed to compete for first place. Instead, the political polemic fell to fourth place.

Yes, Team Badass was most popular release yesterday. The “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” tale earned $1,644,780 on Tuesday, a solid 21% increase from Monday’s $1,361,996. Alas, this is a 49% decline from last Tuesday’s $3,230,645. So the movie will not be earning a million dollars at this time next week. Still, The Expendables 2 has a running total of $55,244,299 in North America. It has also accrued another $66 million overseas, bringing its global take to $121 million. With a $100 million budget, this title should be in the black by the time it leaves theaters, even allowing for a pricey advertising budget.

Second place is a bit of a surprise as The Bourne Legacy jumps from $930,885 on Monday to $1,077,930 on Tuesday. This 16% increase is perfectly in line with the movie’s 13% and 18% Monday-Tuesday improvements the previous two weeks. The fourth Bourne flick has a domestic tally of $87,531,035 along with almost $45 million overseas. While this sequel still has some work to do in order to match the $125 million production budget plus marketing outlay. At worst, the Jeremy Renner film should be a draw but I believe it too will be viewed as a (marginal) winner when all is said and done.

If second place is a surprise then third place is a shock. ParaNorman has finished third before; in fact, this is the seventh time. The surprise is that the Laika release was roughly $300,000 behind the Rocky Mountain Pictures documentary on Monday. Tuesday, ParaNorman overcame its headline-grabbing counterpart to finish in third yet again. The macabre exercise in Claymation grossed $1,040,637, a 16% increase from Monday’s $898,470. ParaNorman has accrued $30,200,684 in North America.

The expected story of the day is 2016: Obama’s America. I had mentioned yesterday that with the Republican National Convention in full swing, the ardent support of conservatives this week could allow the documentary to finish in first place. This could still happen but the opposite was true on Tuesday. Rocky Mountain Pictures estimated the movie’s North American revenue at $1,010,000, a 16% dip from Monday’s $1,205,000. The film has earned a wholly unexpected $11.56 million thus far.




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2016: Obama’s America was the only title in the top ten that fell from Monday to Tuesday. There are a couple of possibilities as to why this happened. The first is that with the convention being impacted by weather and not televised much outside of cable news, people had more free time on Monday. With the Republican National Convention escalating on Tuesday, the target audience for the documentary had incentive to stay home and watch television and/or participate in social media rather than catch a movie. The second is that the movie is frontloaded and that the numbers will only dwindle from here.

I am of the opinion that this is one of those rare wild care releases. There is no previous behavior to examine as a basic model to anticipate the future box office behavior of 2016: Obama’s America. As such, everyone is flying blind on the topic. My expectation is that this story largely vanishes after this week. Still, the documentary could easily attain enough box office to win a weekday. That would be enough to grab further headlines for the film. And further headlines would mean additional box office due to the free publicity involved.

The other story of note in the top ten yesterday was The Dark Knight Rises. The movie that suffered from a weird combination of tragedy and unrealistic expectations has still become one of the largest blockbusters of all-time. With another $888,238 on Tuesday, Batman 7 has a domestic tally of $423,976,618. This amount surpasses The Lion King’s $422.8 million (including the $94.3 million earned in 2011) to become the ninth most popular domestic release ever.

The Dark Knight Rises has a chance to reach as high as seventh place, but another $12.6 million would be required. We will know a lot more about the feasibility of this after Labor Day weekend. The film has earned almost $945 million worldwide and appears likely to surpass The Dark Knight in terms of total global gross. Given what happened in Aurora, Colorado, this is a remarkable achievement in my estimation.

Combined top ten box office revenue yesterday was $9.0 million. This represents a 5.6% increase from Monday’s $7.5 million. Everything is downhill from here until the start of November, I’m afraid.


     


 
 

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