Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
December 1, 2012
The top three remain the same for the third consecutive Friday as the two new releases both flop in the traditional post-Thanksgiving box office swoon.
Killing Them Softly
Brad Pitt's gangster drama Killing Them Softly comes in with a rather, um, soft $2.5 million on Friday. Despite being one of the most famous people in the world, star power can only go so far. Pitt has never been an automatic draw but has had few out and out flops in his career, lately picking smaller, smarter projects that have been successful (including Moneyball, Inglourious Basterds and Burn After Reading in recent years). Killing Them Softly was relatively inexpensive to make so it won't be a complete disaster but it's probably not something he'll like to talk about. A weekend of $7.2 million should be in store.
The Collection
Horror sequel The Collection earned $1.1 million on Friday, good for tenth place, which is something The Collector never did. So it's got that going for it, which is nice. Let's just give it $3 million for the weekend and forget any of this happened.
Notable Holdovers
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 is tops again on Friday with $5.6 million, a 68.9% drop from Black Friday, which is not surprising as pretty much the same thing happened with Breaking Dawn Part 1 a year ago ($16.6 million Black Friday, followed by $5.4 million the following week.). The same pattern gives it $16.9 million in its third weekend.
Meanwhile, Skyfall continues to extend its lead over previous Bond films with another $4.9 million. We're rapidly approaching the point where Skyfall will earn $100 million more than Quantum of Solace, which is just an astounding figure. The gap between James Bond and the sparkly vampires has narrowed considerably from a week ago, and Skyfall will come very close to retaking the top spot in its fourth weekend, but would need a mutliplier of 3.4 to do that. Quantum of Solace had a 3.1 post-Thanksgiving multiplier, but was relegated to the middle of the box office pack by that point. I'm giving the edge to Twilight, but it's going to be neck and neck until the actuals come in. Skyfall should earn $15.6 million this weekend.
Lincoln is in third for the third straight weekend with another $4 million, and creeps closer to $100 million. Give another $13 million to the Steven Spielberg Oscar contender.
Life of Pi drops 62.8% to $3.3 million, a pretty predictable post-holiday decline. It was still one of the bigger surprises of Thanksgiving, and should come in with another $11 million.
Rise of the Guardians stumbles 67.4% from last Friday to $3 million. This is the worst weekend to be a family film, and it's not likely to be around at the end of the month when everything gets a holiday boost. Call it $10.2 million.
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