Friday Box-Office: 'Mission 4' to be Christmas King Over 'Dragon Tattoo,' 'Tintin' and 'Zoo'

Christmas falling on a Sunday is such a bother when you’re trying to relax with the family and have to take time out of coffee, holiday treats and football to report on such meaningless blather as box-office news, but such is the profession I have chosen to embrace. Plus, I owe it to you to keep up with what’s what in theaters so let’s tackle it quickly and get out of here.

First off, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is headed for the Christmas crown, though deciding on how these films will perform over the three-day is a bit tricky. I would imagine all the male targeted features won’t do as well over Saturday and Sunday with football on Christmas Eve and the opening day of the NBA on Christmas Day. So, with Mission taking in approximately $9.7 million on Friday I would normally say I would expect about $40 million, but I can’t help but believe that number is going to be slightly less due to the holiday it faces. Then again, families do like to head out to the theater to take in a movie on Christmas, but will Mission be the film they choose?

Opening on Christmas Day is Steven Spielberg’s War Horse (read my review here) and I imagine families will flock to the war-time fable of a boy and his horse. It has the appearance of a family-friendly tearjerker and Spielberg has done everything he can to ensure it doesn’t get too violent for the kiddies.

Another film opening tomorrow is The Darkest Hour, which Summit has so much confidence in they decided not to screen it for critics. In fact, it has such a major presence in the cinematic landscape I wouldn’t have even known it was coming out had it not been on my release schedule. Congratulations Summit, you effectively buried your own product. Yeah, don’t think that’s much competition for Mission.

As I randomly continue to jump around here, opening yesterday, was Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo, which opened to $3 million following several sneak preview screenings, one of which I attended almost a month ago.

The Hollywood Reporter is calling this a “soft start for the all-audience Christmas film,” but while it is a film that can be watched by all audiences, I would necessarily call it an “all-audience” film, which was more-or-less the focus of my review. And it’s definitely not a Christmas film, at least not thematically. So is this really a soft start or just a sign of what kind of audience this silly premise (true story or not) appeals to?

I do expect Zoo to finish around $10-11 million for the three-day and when you consider it’s carrying a reported $50 million budget, I think it’s safe to call that a less than stellar debut.

Next we have Wednesday openers to discuss, and we’ll begin with David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which myself and my girlfriend contributed to on Thursday night as I wanted to take the film in a second time before beginning to put my top ten for the year together. The theater appeared to be packed on Thursday, a day in which it brought in $3.3 million, and on Friday it took in an estimated $4.6 million on Friday. Since Wednesday the film is up to $12.9 million and after Friday I guess it’s looking at something like $14 million for the three-day at best. Considering it’s carrying a reported $100 million budget, that’s not exactly flattering as films have shown little sign of gaining steam after their initial release this year.

The other Wednesday opener was Spielberg’s other December release, The Adventures of Tintin, and despite exploding overseas where it’s brought in $247.1 million since opening late October, it has tallied only $11.7 million domestically in its first three days, which includes the estimated $3.5 million it made on Friday. It should take in about $11 million for the three-day, but this was a film built for fans of the franchise and obviously the international audience is eating it up. Tintin will survive and a second film will surely be made with Peter Jackson expected to pick up the reins once he completes work on The Hobbit.

And so that does it for my Friday report. I have included Friday estimates below and I will be back on Sunday morning with a complete wrap-up as time allows.