Yes, Iron Man 3 is #1 again with $72.4 million (dropping 58.4%). Big shock. It’s up to $949 million worldwide and will cross the billion dollar mark soon enough. I think we all pretty much expected this after the first reviews and tracking numbers came in so let’s move along to the weekend’s other story… The Great Gatsby.
Opening to the tune of $19.4 million on Friday, The Great Gatsby was immediately director Baz Luhrmann‘s highest opening weekend for a film ever and he still had two days left to go. Once all was said and done, Gatsby was up to $51.1 million, which leaves it just a tad shy of the $57.3 million Moulin Rouge! made in its entire 2001 run. So, yeah, by next weekend or probably by Tuesday, The Great Gatsby will be Luhrmann’s highest grossing domestic release of all time. Not too shabby.
For star Leonardo DiCaprio this is his second largest opening of all-time behind $62.7 million for Inception.
Audiences gave the film a “B” CinemaScore, which isn’t exactly great when it comes to looking too far into the future and with Star Trek Into Darkness hitting theaters next weekend I project a sizable drop next weekend, at least something like 55% if not more. However, with a reported budget of $105 million, a Cannes Film Festival opening night premiere and worldwide dollars still to come I don’t think Warner Bros. will have any reason to complain. Looks like moving it from a Christmas to Summer release was a very smart move.
Looking over the box office predictions from Thursday, Laremy went below the $40 million tracking on Gatsby with a $35 million prediction, which means he missed the mark by a wide margin. However, in the reader predictions we find G-Man‘s $51 million prognostication and have to give him a pat on the back for some fantastic predicting.
And speaking of Star Trek Into Darkness, it opened in seven territories this weekend and managed $31.7 million with totals 70% larger than they were in the same territories for Star Trek back in 2009 (source).
Next we come to Tyler Perry‘s latest production (though he did not write, director or star) Peeples, which you can chalk up right now as a flop as it brought in only $4.8 million from 2,041 theaters. Not a single one of Perry’s other 11 productions made less than $11 million on opening weekend and with the likes of Craig Robinson and Kerry Washington it’s hard for me to understand just what exactly happened here.
Going back to the predictions, Laremy targeted the film for $18 million, which was clearly a bit off, but looking at reader predictions they range from “I don’t even care…” to $21.7 million. The closest on the board comes from Mario Ludwinski at $9.8 million. To say no one saw this coming would be an understatement.
In other news, the Eil Roth starrer, I hated the movie so it doesn’t really bother me much at all.
As I already said, Star Trek Into Darkness is next weekend’s big opener along with limited releases of Black Rock and Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig‘s Frances Ha.
