Weekend Forecast for August 2-4, 2013

By Reagen Sulewski

August 2, 2013

I think I saw this in my nightmare last night.

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Technically not an August film, as it opened on Wednesday, The Smurfs 2 has already had part of its verdict written – and I'm mostly proud of you people. Its first day was just slightly over $5 million, throwing under the first day of the recent Turbo. Considering the original's $35 million opening and decent final total of $140 million, it's a surprisingly soft bow. Perhaps people actually got wise to just how bad the first film was, and are punishing the filmmakers for a lazy and unnecessary sequel. In any case, we seem to be on pace to avoiding Smurfs 3 – unless those horrible foreign numbers are high again – so you people better not let me down. A three day weekend of $22 million should suffice.

The Wolverine limped home to about $53 million for a weekend win in its debut, down over a third from the last Wolverine film – so there's our franchise damage calibrated right there. Word-of-mouth seems fairly friendly to it as being faithful to the spirit of the comics, so it has at least that going for it. Still, as a comic movie, it'll have to overcome a lot in order to be considered “leggy”. That means about $27 million this weekend at best. Realistically, we're shooting for $150 million domestic.

For other returning films – The Conjuring will pass $100 million by Saturday at the latest, and with that being almost pure profit, Warner Bros. is frantically shoving money at James Wan to get him to make a sequel. I'd expect around $12 million here.




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Despicable Me 2 continues to be one of the few bright spots of the summer, as it is on the verge of becoming the fifth highest grossing animated film of all time, with a very outside chance of hitting fourth place by the end of its run. Kids are simply crazy for minions, and it's been a rare case of a film dominating a market segment. Give it $11 million this weekend.

That's possibly one of the reasons for the underperformance of Turbo (though its just plain weirdness might also be a factor). With a $135 million budget, its sub $100 million performance is just a disaster for Dreamworks. It should find about $8 million this weekend.

Further down the list we have Grown Ups 2 with about $7 million, Red 2 with $6 million, and The Heat with about $5 million – the latter another bright spot of a summer when many sure things have missed and missed badly – just look at Pacific Rim and R.I.P.D. below the $5 million mark this weekend (though at different scales of fiascos there). It's coming close to the last chance for summer films to salvage anything.


Forecast: Weekend of August 2-4, 2013
Rank
Film
Number of
Sites
Changes in Sites
from Last
Estimated
Gross ($)
1 2 Guns 3,025 New 32.1
2 The Wolverine 3,924 0 26.7
3 The Smurfs 2 3,866 New 22.4
4 The Conjuring 3,115 +93 12.6
5 Despicable Me 2 3,204 -272 11.3
6 Turbo 2,985 -824 8.4
7 Grown Ups 2 3,075 -183 7.2
8 Red 2 2,755 -261 6.3
9 The Heat 2,074 -310 5.1
10 Pacific Rim 1,803 -799 4.1

Continued:       1       2

     


 
 

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