Daily Box Office Analysis

By David Mumpower

August 14, 2014

They just watched a Schmidt clip reel.

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Yesterday, I discussed the likelihood of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles falling out of first place. Honestly, that was just lip service, as I expected Let’s Be Cops to finish around $5 million yesterday. That is a total I did not anticipate would be enough to defeat the reigning champion. After all, the latest Ninja Turtle offering earned $7.6 million on Tuesday. Either it would have to die instantly or Let’s Be Cops would have to over-perform in order for TMNT to fail to be number one for the sixth straight day.

SURPRISE!

The number one film in North America yesterday was Let’s Be Cops, which garnered $5.2 million on Wednesday, $1.2 million of which came from Tuesday sneaks. Given its actual total of $4 million yesterday, it should fall in the range of $2-$3 million today, bringing its two-day tally to roughly $8 million. At the risk of stealing Reagen Sulewski’s bit, I would anticipate a five-day take of $24 million or so. In other words, we are discussing a tremendous start for a low-budget production.

The story is not what Let’s Be Cops did, but instead what Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles failed to do. The dethroned champion fell 33% yesterday, one of the stiffest drops within the top ten. After earning $7.6 million on Tuesday, TMNT managed only $5.1 million on Wednesday. I do not want to sound the alarms or anything as several (eight out of nine, in fact) titles within the top ten declined at least 25%.




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What must be determined is whether yesterday’s performance was a fluke caused by an abnormally lousy Wednesday at the box office or the first sign of a frontloaded film. To date, the reptilian warriors had avoided such signals. A $2.5 million drop in 24 hours is an eye-opening turn of events.

While your instinct may be to blame breaking news last night, there are no other metrics to support that assertion. Just because something is trending on Twitter does not mean that it is impacting the box office. The arrests of journalists took place after 7 p.m., and customers were already in theaters in the eastern and central time zones. In addition, Let’s Be Cops performed in line with expectations so I do not see why it would be unaffected when everything else was.

Circling back a week, five out of ten films fell by more than 25% on Wednesday. On the Wednesday prior to that, four out of 10 films declined at least that much. On Wednesday, July 23, only one top 10 title dropped by 25%. Two releases did so on Wednesday, July 16th. What I believe we are seeing instead of a news factor is instead the first sign that summer is ending.

School is already back in session in some parts of the country while others begin on Monday. Going to movies becomes less convenient when that occurs. The weekday percentage drops look worse in this column because the early week numbers received more summer weekday inflation. There is a case of diminishing returns coming into play right now. We will continue to explore the veracity of this assertion during the next two weeks of columns.


     


 
 

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