[h=1]
‘Grown-Ups 2′ Beats ‘Pacific Rim’ And ‘Despicable Me 2′ For Friday Box Office; Domestic Weekend Still Too Close To Call[/h] By
NIKKI FINKE, Editor in Chief
SATURDAY 1 AM, 7TH UPDATE: What a surprise Friday’s domestic box office turned out to be as Summer 2013 continues to sizzle. Total moviegoing this weekend is close to $200M which is a humongous +29% from last year. At first the three top films looked neck and neck throughout Friday. But even though Universal’s and Illumination Entertainment’s global #1 holdover
Despicable Me 2 placed #2 Friday and must wait for the Saturday kiddie bump to see if it can land on top of the worldwide box office again. My sources think the 3D toon did $15M domestic Friday (-56%) and will end up $44M-$47M with a cume of $230M through Sunday. After predictions of possible disaster, Warner Bros/Legendary Pictures’ 3D
Pacific Rim (3,275 theaters and 331 IMAX screens) seemed strong throughout the day but then “ran out of IMAX tix and pre-sales at last” according to an exec. It ended Friday #3 with $13.5M and an expected $35M-$37M weekend. With audiences giving it an ‘A-’ CinemaScore, the scifi winner-takes-all actioner may have an upside with word of mouth. Or else the hype just failed to hold. But Sony Pictures/Happy Madison’s
Growns-Ups 2 (3,491 theaters) wound up #1 Friday with a middle-of-the-road ’B’ CinemaScore (same as the original) despite terrible reviews. Goes to show that this summer’s audiences are still starved for comedy. And that no one can count out Adam Sandler and his $80M ensemble or Jeff Blake’s strong marketing department. It made $16.5M for $43M-$46M, beating the first’s $14.4M/$40.5M. (
Top Ten below.)
Here’s how it all went down: For Thursday late shows and Friday midnights,
Pacific Rim overperformed for $3.6M with the 3D ratio a strong 52% “and the largest ratio of a wide release for a very long time” according to an exec.
Grown-Ups 2 also started with bigger than expected $2.3M late shows even though it’s a PG-13 family, non-fanboy, non-IMAX movie. As of 9:00 AM PT Friday morning on Fandango, the three top films were selling neck and neck online and through mobile: 31% for
Pacific Rim, 30% for
Despicable Me 2, and 28% for
Grown-Ups 2. According to Friday’s Rotten Tomatoes scores,
Pacific Rim had 72% positive reviews,
Grown-Ups 2 an astoundingly awful 5%. (Ouch!)
Few tentpoles this summer and even this year have prompted more uninformed box office forecasting and just amateurish speculation (but not on Deadline) than the mecha anime inspired
Pacific Rim. Headlines like “It’ll tank!” or “It’ll triumph!” sometimes within 24 hours of one another, ignored the fact that tracking is unreliable. And it sure has been this May, June, and July. One reason for the extra attention on
Pacific Rim is that it cost an expensive $180M-$220M due to its Industrial Light & Magic CGI. And also because it was fully developed and produced and majority financed by Legendary (with Warner Bros minority financing as well as distributing and marketing) without stars from a home-grown IP. That has focused all eyes on
Legendary’s Thomas Tull, screenwriter Travis Beacham (who had the idea for the film), and co-scribe/director
Guillermo del Toro. Tracking initially lagged but then domestic interest in
Pacific Rim climbed once the full impact of Sue Kroll’s marketing campaign hit the market. But I fear it was front-loaded with scifi fanboys and failed to widen. It also seemed too derivative of
Transformers,
Godzilla, and, well, everything else audiences have seen before. While a major studio might be disappointed with
Pacific Rim‘s domestic gross, mega-financier Tull has the luxury of mining this marginal outcome into a franchise – especially depending on how foreign performs.
It’s still too early to tell but international is a big part of
Pacific Rim‘s strategy day and date in 38 territories in a crowded marketplace with the Top 12 markets releasing this weekend on 9,500 screens. Warner Bros overnight told me that Korea had another great day at $1.6M on Friday, ranking #1 and taking 45% of the Top Five. UK still has some locations missing but opening day was $1M from 491 screens, ranking 2nd behind fellow opener
Monsters University. Australia’s cume is now $1.2M but only #4 for two straight days during the school holidays which is baffling, Italy $585K, and New Zealand $221K. Piclaunched in 25 markets on Thursday with a solid $7.8M on roughly 5,950 screens. Thursday’s top 7 markets included Russia at #1 for $2M from 1,537 screens, and a strong opening day throughout Asia for #1. France and Germany follow next weekend, then China on July 31st, and Spain, Japan and Brazil on August 9th.
As for
Grown-Ups 2, Sony is only releasing it day and date in just Spain and some small territories Friday, Germany next week, and then a wide rollout.
Here’s the
Top Ten based on Friday estimates. Refined numbers and full analysis today:
1.
Grown-Ups 2 (Sony) NEW [Runs 3,491] PG13
Friday $16.5M, Weekend $46.0M
2.
Despicable Me 2 (Illumination/Universal) Week 2 [Runs 4,003] PG
Friday $15.0M (-56%), Weekend $47.0M, Cume $230.0M
3.
Pacific Rim (Legendary/Warner Bros) NEW [Runs 3,275] PG13
Friday $13.5M, Weekend $37.0M
4.
The Heat (Fox) Week 3 [Runs 3,128] R
Friday $4.2M, Weekend $13.0M, Cume $111.4M
5.
The Lone Ranger (Disney) Week 2 [Runs 3,904] PG13
Friday $3.4M (-68%), Weekend $10.4M, Cume $70.5M
6.
Monsters University (Pixar/Disney) Week 4 [Runs 3,142] G
Friday $3.3M, Weekend $10.5M, Cume $237.6M
7.
World War Z (Paramount) Week 4 [Runs 3,003] PG13
Friday $2.8M, Weekend $9.3M, Cume $177.0M
8.
White House Down (Columbia/Sony) Week 3 [Runs 2,566] PG13
Friday $1.8M, Weekend $6.0M, Cume $62.8M
9.
Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain (Summit/Lionsgate) Week 2 [Runs 892] R
Friday $1.5M (-59%), Weekend $4.7M, Cume $26.1M
10.
Man Of Steel (Legendary/Warner Bros) Week 5 [Runs 2,150] PG13
Friday $1.4M, Weekend $5.0M, Cume $281.2M
, de verdad que es una pena, en mi opinión la peli se merece muuuuuucho más y es que me ha encantado 
. No entiendo como es que en USA ha perdido fuelle con respecto a la anterior 
, no me lo explico 
. Falta por estrenarse en un mercado taaaan importante como lo es el japonés 
, pero no sé, creo que ni aún así. Al final se quedará en torno a los 460 o por ahí