'Titans' at Top of Friday Box-Office, More than Doubling Tyler Perry in Second

‘Titans’ at Top of Friday Box-Office, More than Doubling Tyler Perry in Second

April 3, 2010

By Brad Brevet

I thought this may be the first weekend a new Tyler Perry film didn’t hit the #1 spot in its opening frame, but a quick look back and Daddy’s Little Girls, Meet the Browns and The Family that Preys all missed the top spot so it’s nothing new as his latest will come in second to Clash of the Titans, which will take home this week’s #1 as it got off to a good start with an estimated $26.4 million on Friday. Added to its Thursday midnight total of approximately $4.2 million pushes its tally over $30 million.

The Internet is running rampant with negative chatter regarding the rush-job 2D-to-3D conversion of Titans, which is certainly not up to par and rather embarrassing, but to slam the film on a whole is a bit over the top in my opinion, and to those that have seen it, tell me the ending when Perseus receives his “gift” isn’t simply the best worst moment you’ve seen in the theater in a long time. It is so awful it’s brilliant.

Industry speculation is the Titans total will end somewhere around $60-65 million, but I still wouldn’t be surprised if it managed to hit a bit higher.

As I mentioned, Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too? came in second on Friday with an estimated sum of $12.3 million, which should end up around $32 million and the weekend’s other “new” release is the Miley Cyrus film The Last Song, which actually opened on Wednesday so its Friday estimate of $7.1 million should be looked at with the earlier release in mind as it will most likely carry on to $17-18 million for the three-day weekend.

The Dreamworks animated feature How to Train Your Dragon is showing a bit of staying power, thankfully, with an estimated $11.2 million on Friday and will need to try really hard to hit $30 million. Depending on the turn out of Perry fans vs. families looking for an animated film on Easter, perhaps Dragon could slide into that second slot. Though, that’s rather unlikely.

Finally, Hot Tub Time Machine dropped 40-percent from last Friday to an estimated $2.9 million and a likely three-day of $7.5 million. The film earned only $14 million last weekend in a disappointing opening and Nikki Finke has a story discussing the film’s financials, which shows the film’s production budget around $50 million (though MGM claims it was only $35 million). The film is turning into this year’s Snakes On a Plane and we all know where New Line ended up shortly after that film and it’s not as if MGM doesn’t have well documented financial problems it’s dealing with.

The rest of the Friday box-office breaks down as follows. Laremy will be here on Sunday for a complete wrap-up.