The Smurfs 2 should win the weekend, unless you figure the mean-spirited reviews will sink it with parents. The movie is of course horrid, no one should see it, but something like four million people will. I’m slotting it at $30.9 million, but there is plenty of wiggle room either way, so this shouldn’t be a “posted first, gimme my points” sort of situation. I could see tracking being correct, $25 million, but it’s not hard to envision a scenario where $35 million is in play, if only because the first one pulled down that amount.
2 Guns is another title you can throw out the record books on (wait, do we need those for anything?). Is this Domino or Pain & Gain? Does Denzel Washington still pack the theaters?
Oddly, six out of Mr. Washington’s last eight titles have been rated R, so there’s plenty of precedent. The issue is the numbers are all over the place there, last year’s Flight couldn’t quite manage $25 million while Safe House came in over $40 million. My take? It will come in low, because the trailers have been awful, even though, amazingly enough, the film itself is eminently watchable.
Clearly The Wolverine is going to sink like a stone, the biggest dipper of the weekend, but I personally can’t go lower than a 55 percent drop. That adds up to $23.9 million, so start your predictions there.
Finally, for the first time in Oracle history, we’re going to predict a title that won’t even make the top ten. That movie? The Spectacular Now is getting a whopping four theaters, making it the ultimate in enforced scarcity / dartboard predictions. In recent history, movies with four theaters could end up around Moonrise Kingdom‘s $2 million all the way down to Fantastic Mr. Fox at $284,000. Now with that much variance on Wes Anderson‘s films, what do you make of The Spectacular Now? I’m going with $250,000 (that’s 0.25 for you readers predicting below) for the four theaters, but it’s going to take some savvy math to win on this title.
Current Record: 7-16-1 against the wisdom of crowds. On the comeback trail.
Major Theater Chain (MTC) Tracking
- The Smurfs 2: $25 million
- Two Guns: $23.8 million
How say you? Get your calls in and get some points!
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
