American Sniper is going to be a three-time winner this year, mimicking last years Ride Along run. $257 million on a $59 million budget is playing with power, they timed it perfectly to capture everyone’s desire for January action. $31.7 million is my prediction for the weekend, gotta go low because last Super Bowl weekend only netted $70 million for the top 12, and I’m still in the 80s with my calls.
Project Almanac is getting a thousand more theaters than any other new release, which is the only reason it’s going to get this high. Well, also the early reviews seem to be somewhat positive, it’s still fresh as of Thursday morning – but basically nothing can save a new release geared towards men on Super Bowl weekend. It’s a lost cause at $9.8 million. Thankfully, it cost them next to nothing, and given our next two films Paramount will probably take it.
I’ve seen plenty of trailers for Black or White, and Kevin Costner was touting it pretty hard at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. But he also made Draft Day, so a giant grain of salt there. Conversely, the early reviews here stink. $4.4 million is as high as I can go for a film that looks massively typical. It will never be heard from again.
The Loft was not screened for critics, isn’t getting enough theaters, and doesn’t have a marketing campaign that I’ve seen. $4 million might be kind, especially after how hard we’ve seen films with a marketing push bomb in the past few months.
That’s all for my thoughts on the box office weekend, it looks like a slow weekend overall, but hopefully we’ll see a bounce-back and some excitement with Jupiter Ascending next time around. Your turn!
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
