Just look at those top four films, two horrors — Silent Hill: Revelation 3D and Paranormal Activity 4 — two Warner Bros. titles — Argo and Cloud Atlas — and all four are rated R. Not only that, all four are likely to be down as Hurricane Sandy threatens the Atlantic seaboard as we’re likely looking at four films all ending the weekend somewhere around $9-14 million, but which one will be on top?
At the moment it looks like Ben Affleck‘s Argo is poised for its second weekend at #1 after shortly falling to second last weekend. With $3.9 million on Friday it should manage close to the same on Saturday and Sunday and finish somewhere around $13 million.
In second is Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, which I have to believe is going to drop as horror fans are quick to theaters and the “C” CinemaScore suggests they weren’t exactly loving what they saw. After $3.5 million on Friday, I imagine a $9.5 million weekend is in store.
Scoring a similar “C” CinemaScore is Cloud Atlas, which isn’t going to help the nearly three-hour film gain any traction over the weekend or during its theatrical run. With $3.4 million on Friday it should do a little better than Silent Hill over the weekend due to it being a little bit more of a universal feature, but I can’t see anything much higher than $10.5 million at this point.
And in fourth, Paranormal Activity 4 definitely doesn’t have the legs of its predecessors, but as long as they keep those budgets down around $5 million these will continue to be worthwhile films to distribute.
Other newcomers include Paramount and Nickelodeon’s Fun Size, which you’d be hard-pressed to find advertising for, which may be why it landed at #11 on Friday and pulled in an estimated $1.3 million. Doing even worse is Fox and Walden’s Chasing Mavericks, which opened in 2,002 theaters and could only manage to bring home $825,000. That’s only six fewer theaters than Cloud Atlas is playing in.
I have included the Friday top ten directly below and will be back Sunday morning with a complete wrap-up.
- Argo – $3.9 million
- Silent Hill: Revelation 3D – $3.5 million
- Cloud Atlas – $3.4 million
- Paranormal Activity 4 – $3.1 million
- Taken 2 – $2.6 million
- Hotel Transylvania – $2.5 million
- Sinister – $1.7 million
- Alex Cross – $1.7 million
- Here Comes the Boom – $1.6 million
- Pitch Perfect – $1.3 million
