Nikki Finke has the early Friday box-office estimates and things look good for A Nightmare on Elm Street (read my review), which managed $1.6 million from Thursday midnight shows and added an additional $13.4 million on Friday for an opening day total around $15 million. This comes despite a 15% RottenTomatoes rating, though the RT community seems high on the film with their users giving it a “fresh” 64% rating so far.
Nightmare will likely finish around $35 million for the weekend, which is a little over $4 million more than the RopeofSilicon Box-Office Oracle, Laremy Legel, predicted, though he was the more conservative of the box-office prognosticators out there. Many I believe were closer to $40 million for the Platinum Dunes release.
The question now will be whether or not Nightmare follows lock step in behind last year’s heavily front-loaded Platinum Dunes ’80s horror remake entry, Friday the 13th, which took home $40.5 million on opening weekend only to earn $65 million overall. Nightmare will have to battle with Iron Man 2 next weekend for dollars, a film that is already playing strong overseas and is said to potentially open as large as $135 million when it hits theaters on May 7, which would have it competing with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest for the #4 spot on the all-time opening weekend chart.
As for this weekend’s other new release, Summit’s Furry Vengeance is performing like any other Summit title without the word Twilight in it and opened with about $2 million on Friday on its way to a likely $6-7 million weekend before it will surely be forgotten in a couple of days. I pointed out the dismal RottenTomatoes rating for A Nightmare on Elm Street, but it’s golden compared to the 2% rating for Furry Vengeance. Only Chris Hewitt at the “St. Paul Pioneer Press” was willing to stake his reputation on the film by giving it the only positive review out there saying “what Furry lacks in originality it makes up for in cleverness.”
I have added the complete Friday box-office below, and Laremy will be here Sunday with the weekend wrap-up.
- Nightmare on Elm Street – $15 million
- How To Train Your Dragon – $2.4 million
- Date Night – $2.3 million
- The Back-Up Plan – $2.3 million
- Furry Vengeance – $2 million
- The Losers – $1.8 million
- Clash of the Titans – $1.6 million
- Kick-Ass – $1.2 million
- Death at a Funeral – $1.2 million
- Oceans – $800,000
