Divergent is your clear winner this weekend, perfectly placed for young female adults against a weekend of NCAA basketball. Predictions for this title run the gambit, I’ve seen $10 million higher than my number, but I don’t sense quite the groundswell here. I’m going with $53.2 million, way better than films like Mortal Instruments and I am Number Four, but nowhere near the Twilight and Hunger Games of the world.
Muppets Most Wanted is a full 22 points lower on RottenTomatoes than the 2011 version, it’s safe to say the magic is subsiding. The first one opened at $29 million if you’d like to plan for a sequel bump, but I’m going with $25.5 million.
Yep, this will be a slightly abbreviated Oracle (I’m one of the guys watching games) but I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention The Grand Budapest Hotel. Were you aware it cleared $55,000 per theater last weekend? Having only 66 theaters and cracking the top ten is playing with power. I can’t help but think it will repeat its appearance in the list this weekend, but I couldn’t find true theater expansion numbers, so keep a look out for those.
And finally, sinking like a stone, 300: Rise of an Empire. But guess what? It’s only $30 million away from profitability (according to our always rough math). Thanks international audiences! Domestically though, the outlook is much less rosy, and I’m projecting another “higher than half” drop. Theoretically, we could have predicted God’s Not Dead from your pals at Freestyle Releasing, but as I don’t having it cracking the top ten the numbers might have come in too slow for our needs. So there you go, I’m off to have some madness, predictions away!
Current Record: 10-30 against the wisdom of the crowds.
Major Theater Chain (MTC) Tracking
- Divergent: N/A
- Muppets Most Wanted: N/A
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
