Current Streak: One weekend in a row.
Threat Level to Streak Being Broken: Zero percent, once again.
Reason: Warm Bodies will be the easy winner. Everything else will be roadkill.
MTC Tracking
Warm Bodies: $21 million
Bullet to the Head: $7 million
Stand Up Guys: $1.5 million
Warm Bodies will win easily, sure. But as I was researching this weekend I kept saying to myself, “Where’s the money, Lebowski?” A top twelve under $76 million is brutally bad, even the last Super Bowl weekend managed $115 million. That weekend had Chronicle and The Woman in Black facing off, and it ended up being a worthy competition. 2013 resembles 2011 in a much bigger way, The Roommate bested Sanctum, and the top twelve only scraped up $73 million. Still, if you were feeling optimistic, there is some wiggle room for higher totals, choose your own adventure.
Let’s get back to Warm Bodies, a film supported by the tracking and demographics, destined to be the big winner. Oddly, it’s also supported by the critics, earning a 71 percent over at RottenTomatoes (trivia: that’s one point higher than Les Miserables. Warm Bodies for Best Picture?) The best part for Warm Bodies is there is only upside, say the Super Bowl is a boring blowout, or perhaps factor in that Bullet to the Head is dead upon arrival (see: The Last Stand, Parker).
The market has spoken on grandpas with guns, and they have found them wanting. Plus, opening Bullet to the Head against the biggest “guy” weekend of the year is simply giving up. Warner Bros. should have just renamed that film White Flag: Don’t Bother and been done with it. With all that in mind, I don’t think $30 million is out of reach for Warm Bodies, though it will need much of it on Friday and Saturday because both genders watch the Super Bowl.
By comparison, Stand Up Guys isn’t getting enough theaters to compete, and will likely be left in the eleventh slot.
For the holdovers, they’ll mostly sink like stones. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters should drop around 55 percent, Parker will do slightly better due to the superior Cinemascore (B+ vs. B) and RottenTomatoes tally (37 percent vs. 18 percent).
That’s all for this weekend, how y’all feeling? You can predict Warm Bodies and Bullet to the Head, throw in a Stand Up guys call if you think it can sneak into the top ten (I’ve got it only $100,000 down).
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
