Weekend Box-Office: ‘Ted’ Third Highest Opening for R-Rated Comedy and ‘Magic Mike’ Holds On
By
Brad Brevet
It’s encouraging to see such strong numbers at the top of this week’s box-office considering we’re heading into a stretch of weekends that will bring us The Amazing Spider-Man, Ice Age: Continental Drift and The Dark Knight Rises, which means we may be talking about big numbers for a while and Ted and Magic Mike are helping get things started.
Laremy predicted the #1 movie correctly 3 Weeks In A Row
A massive, massive opening for Seth MacFarlane‘s feature directorial debut. The “Family Guy” creator drops an R-rated bombshell on the box-office as Ted rakes in $54.1 million, making it the third best R-rated comedy debut of all-time behind The Hangover Part II ($85.9m) and Sex and the City ($57m). As I said yesterday, the film received an “A-” Cinemascore from audiences and I don’t see why it won’t continue to feed the over 17 auds once Spider-Man arrives next week.
As far as predictions go, I thought Laremy was taking a bit of a risk going with Ted, but I was apparently way off as his $35.6 million comes up almost $20 million short.
Reader predictions from Thursday were all over the place from the lowest of $14 million to the highest, and the one that got the closest, being $46.5 million from Chris Etrata. No one dared hit $50 million and who could blame yah.
Weekend: $54.1 million RottenTomatoes Score:70% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #1 and his prediction of $35.6 million was $18.5m off for a percentage error of 34.2%.
Magic Mike was huge out of the gates with $19.4 million on Friday, which included just over $2 million from midnight screenings. Things didn’t fair entirely so well on Saturday as it dipped 41%, but the overall $39.2 million for its opening weekend puts it in a position to make over $100 million domestically on a budget of only $7 million. Should it hit the century mark it would make for Channing Tatum’s third $100 million earner this year (The Vow, 21 Jump Street) and what’s impressive about all three is they were made for a combined total of $79 million. Now that’s good investing.
With Fandango reporting how many tickets Magic Mike was selling a lot of the conversation in Thursday’s prediction thread had to do with that. Problem there was people forgot the audience for Ted doesn’t preorder tickets, they show up. As for those Mike purchases, clearly most of them were for opening day and on the reader prediction side of things Jack was almost spot on with his $39 million prediction, nice job.
Weekend: $39.1 million / RottenTomatoes:79% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #3 with $29.3 million, which is $9.8m off for a 25.06% error.
A 49% drop for Brave and a $34 million second weekend finish is a solid effort as just about everyone had a movie to go see when it comes to the top three and just wait, yet another audience was served with the film in fourth place.
Weekend: $34 million (-48.7% drop) / Cume: $131.6 million / RottenTomatoes:76% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #2 with $29.8 million, which is $4.2m off for a 12.35% error.
Tyler Perry’s last film was Good Deeds back in February and it didn’t do so well, bringing in only $35 million overall, but Madea’s Witness Protection once again proves that when he puts on a dress people will come to watch. As for what audience this serves, I’m not entirely sure who is in the market to watch a man put on a dress and pretend he’s a woman, but with $26.4 million in its opening weekend there are apparently quite a few people interested.
Laremy was close on this one, but CJohn’s $26.5 million was closer. Like Harmonica said in the predictions on Thursday, it appears you can just toss a $25 million prediction at these Madea films and come away pretty close.
Weekend: $26.3 million Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #4 with $25.9 million, which is $0.4m off for a 1.52% error.
It’s up to $180 million now domestically and just shy of $400 million worldwide as of posting this article. As far as the franchise is concerned it still has some work to do as the first film made $532.7 million worldwide and Escape 2 Africa made $603.9 million. Yeah, I’d say that latter number is way out of reach. I wonder how Ice Age 4 will do.
Weekend: $11.8 million (-40.1% drop) / Cume: $180 million / RottenTomatoes:76% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #5 with $10.6 million, which is $1.2m off for a 10.17% error.
Yikes, a 63% drop in its second weekend and it would seem like by next Friday this vampire hunter will be an afterthought. Maybe a mash-up having Abe hunt Twilight‘s Edward back in the good ol’ days would get people to watch
Weekend: $6 million (-63.2% drop) / Cume: $29 million / RottenTomatoes:34% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #6 with $7.5 million, which is $1.5m off for a 25% error.
Wes Anderson’s latest is still kicking ass and taking names as it is now in 854 theaters and bringing in $5,706 per. It’s obviously way too soon to tell, but anyone think this has a shot at a Best Picture nomination?
Weekend: $4.8 million / Cume: $18.4 million / RottenTomatoes:94% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #7 with $5.7 million, which is $0.9m off for a 18.75% error.
It’s over $313 million worldwide, but that $170 million production budget still looms large. For this to get that sequel they’re talking about they are going to have to trim at least $50 million of that budget to make it worthwhile.
Weekend: $4.4 million (-45% drop) / Cume: $145.6 million / RottenTomatoes:49% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #10 with $4.1 million, which is $0.3m off for a 6.82% error.
I liked this movie and clearly liked it more than others when you take my review into account compared to the 54% RottenTomatoes rating, but even I can’t explain why you’d release a small family drama in the middle of summer when marketing is being dominated by the top tier films you see in places 1-5. Had this been released in October or maybe at the beginning of the year or around a more family friendly holiday it could have done much better, but in this slot it didn’t stand much of a chance.
As for reader predictions, most didn’t predict People Like Us, but those that did all remained relatively low with Ian coming closest at $4.7 million.
Weekend: $4.3 million / RottenTomatoes:54% Laremy’s rank: Laremy picked it to finish #8 with $5.2 million, which is $0.9m off for a 20.93% error.
Elsewhere, in a limited New York and Los Angeles opening, Beasts of the Southern Wild opened with $169,000 from four theaters for a $42,000 per theater average. The film expands this coming week beginning on Wednesday and further on Friday and it will be interesting to see how it does going forward. If people and critics continue to support it I definitely see Oscar potential.
So we look forward to next week where The Amazing Spider-Man hits theaters on Tuesday, July 3, Katy Perry: Part of Me arrives on Thursday, July 5 and Oliver Stone’s Savages hits theaters on Friday. Anyone care to throw out some early thoughts? How high will Spider-Man go in its six day run? Did you see it opened with $50.2 million internationally this weekend?
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