Daily Box Office Analysis
By David Mumpower
June 10, 2014
BOP frequently discusses the internal multiplier, a calculation of opening weekend box office divided by Friday box office. A strong weekend multiplier was once considered to be 3.0 for new releases. As studios have punished for more money to be earned as quickly as possible, we have reached a point where 2.85 is solid most of the time. Anything under 2.40 is considered heavily frontloaded. It is quite difficult to possess a weekend multiplier lower than 2.20. The official multiplier for The Fault in Our Stars is 1.84, one of the lowest in the history of our industry. Even if we remove the $8.1 million in Thursday box office, we are still discussing a weekend multiplier of 2.23. In other words, even if I work to paint The Fault in Our Stars in the best possible light, the results are still grim. We are discussing a movie that was massively frontloaded on opening weekend.
As we enter the summer daily box office analysis season, the seminal question about The Fault in Our Stars is whether it can regain momentum. I want to be blunt here that I am as big a fan of this project as anyone you will ever meet. The author, John Green, is someone I respect because of the way he earned his stripes via the Internet’s meritocracy system. As much as I want to say nice things here, 15 years of box office experience forces me to acknowledge that movies that die this quickly on opening weekend rarely find a second wind with regards to momentum.
In order for that to be a real possibility in this particular instance, The Fault in Our Stars would have to hold extremely well on weekdays. At first blush, the news is middling at best. The tearjerker performed well enough on Monday to finish in first place. The surprise would have been if it had not. The marginal good news is that it fell 45% from Sunday’s $9.3 million to $5.1 million on Monday, the best Sunday-to-Monday hold in the top 10. While the movie should receive a Tuesday bump, even that is not guaranteed, meaning that The Fault in Our Stars is shaping up to be a one day wonder at the box office. Prove me wrong, zealous fangirls!
Of course, no matter what happens next, the movie is already wildly profitable. The $12 million production now has a running total of $53.1 million after four days in release. In terms of return on investment, that is the stuff of myth and legend. Generally speaking, only horror films ever accrue so much profit so quickly although 2014 has seen its fair share of religious offerings match the feat.
The rest of the top three is predictable but unexciting. Maleficent continues to hold down the second spot, garnering $4 million yesterday. It fell 62% from Sunday, which is another indication that it is not as child-friendly as most of Disney’s releases. Third place goes to the subject of tomorrow’s column, Edge of Tomorrow. The lavishly praised Tom Cruise flick declined 59% from $7.7 million on Sunday to $3.2 million yesterday. With a running domestic total of $31.9 million, the Warner Bros. release is already fixated on international revenue to carry it out of the red on the ledger sheet. I will explore its path to solvency in our next discussion.
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