Daily Box Office Analysis

By David Mumpower

June 17, 2014

Aw, they're having a sleepover.

New at BOP:
Share & Save
Digg Button  
Print this column
Another new week brings a couple of new openers to evaluate. Obviously, 22 Jump Street and How to Train Your Dragon 2 will receive the majority of the discussion this week. Still, there will also be an opportunity to monitor last week’s notables, both of which are performing predictably.

Let’s start with the biggest story from the weekend, 22 Jump Street. The latest joint from Phil Lord and Chris Miller won the weekend with an estimated $60 million. When actuals were released yesterday, the news was slightly (but only slightly) less positive. A $13.2 million Sunday placed the final touch on an opening weekend of $57.1 million, a dazzling total for a $50 million production.

The obvious comparison is to the first movie, 21 Jump Street. As we have noted previously at BOP, that title debuted to $36.3 million; furthermore, it required eight days to reach $57.1 million. Only two years later, 22 Jump Street has outperformed its predecessor across the board, which speaks to two key aspects of the franchise. The first is that the impeccable quality of 21 Jump Street left a positive impression on consumers to the point that the debut of the sequel has always been a foregone conclusion as a successful project.

The second is that the premise of the television series has been largely abandoned. We are now discussing a buddy cop franchise featuring two of the most popular actors in the industry today. My evaluation is that 21/22/inevitably 23 Jump Street is the Bad Boys of 2014, only funnier because we have swapped out Michael Bay for Phil Lord and Chris Miller. That’s like trading the last two kids picked in Gym class for Aaron Rodgers and Adrian Peterson.




Advertisement



On Monday, 22 Jump Street was the number one film in North America. This is notable only due to the fact that How to Train Your Dragon 2 actually surpassed it on Sunday. So, the incompetent cop comedy regains its place at the top of the charts after a single day absence. The unexpected aspect of this turn of events is that 22 Jump Street won fairly handily. It grossed $6.8 million, coming within $500,000 of matching the combined total of the second and third place films in the process.

Last week, I described the box office rules for weekdays. As a reminder, the top three films in release last Monday fell 45%, 62% and 59%. I mention this only for context as I note that 22 Jump Street declined 48.3%. Obviously, that is a fairly solid Sunday-to-Monday hold. The problem is that we cannot rush to conclusions because the movie with the 45% drop mentioned above was The Fault in Our Stars and, well, you know.

I recognize that the more logical comparison would be 21 Jump Street. Unfortunately, that analog is invalid because it was a March release. Comparing March to June is an utterly pointless endeavor since kids are still in school. And before you say that it is not a kids’ movie, please remember that colleges are out just the same as elementary school. All students have ample opportunity to watch movies right now compared to their free time during the school year.


Continued:       1       2

     


 
 

Need to contact us? E-mail a Box Office Prophet.
Thursday, March 28, 2024
© 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.