Current Streak: 0 Straight Weekends #1 Predicted Correctly
Threat Level to Streak Being Broken: Seriously Large
Reason: When you have a whopping five films within $1.2 million of each other you’re (probably fruitlessly) trying to predict the behavior of a mere 170,000 ticket buyers. So which of these holdovers have a chance? And what will the paint by numbers Playing for Keeps pull off? Let’s break it down!
Lincoln was my undoing last weekend, and I’m prepared to go down with the ship again. I’ve got it slipping a mere 31 percent for a $9.2 million weekend, which should be enough to surpass a rapidly falling teen movie. Lincoln has earned a very solid $86 million here in the states, and though the international earnings shouldn’t be spectacular, things are lining up nicely for the movie to do huge business on home video.
Skyfall is doing the Rounders thing – hanging around. This will be the fifth weekend in a row in the top two, and Sony has to be feeling good about that $871 million worldwide haul.
Going further down the board, Life of Pi will need either an 1) Academy bailout or 2) largish international box office to negate that $120 million production budget. Either of these could happen, but it doesn’t look as though it has enough oomph to rely on the domestic market. I’ve got it bringing in $8.7 million this weekend.
In terms of new releases, it’s a nightmare. Playing for Keeps is the only new release that’s going wide, and it’s tough to predict a number over $3,500 per theater. If New Year’s Eve only opened at $13 million in December, what prayer do Gerard Butler and Jessica Biel alone have? I’m very bearish on this title and can’t go any higher than $8.6 million.
In other news, End of Watch is getting a big expansion to 1,249 theaters, it’s an attempt to get some Oscar buzz going. Given the completely wide open field, it’s a gamble worth taking.
One final note, this weekend will have a tough time cracking a $75 million top twelve. These aren’t exactly the weekends Hollywood dreams of once they’ve hung the stockings with care, but enough of me babbling, it’s your turn to take a swipe. Calls on Playing for Keeps and the expanding End of Watch will be tallied, as will any coherent theories on this weekend’s probable champ. Bring it on in the comments below!
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
