Fifty Shades of Grey won’t hold up spectacularly, but it won’t crater either, as the audience does skew slightly older than your typical Twilight crowd. Then again, it doesn’t have Valentine’s Day. Hmmm, I still can’t dip it more than 55 percent as the audience I’ve spoken to “enjoys” it as a girl’s night out. Hey, guys get dozens of nonsense films like this a year, meant only for them, so I can hardly begrudge a terrible movie aimed at an underserved demo. $38.3 million is where I’m at, though there’s sooooo much wiggle room on either side.
Hot Tub Time Machine 2 looks dead on arrival, poor reviews and no John Cusack sort of murdered it before it started. It’s not as though John Cusack is a draw, it’s more that a sequel should have the same cast if you want to recapture whatever magic was there. $13.8 million is clearly a sad call, and I think there’s some chance I’m high on all of these because last year (same weekend) was much slower at the box office.
McFarland, USA suffers from a different problem, and that’s total lack of awareness. 70 percent on RottenTomatoes means it’s halfway decent, but that doesn’t cut it in a period where people aren’t all that inclined to trudge out to the theaters. $10.4 million is my thought, though it couldn’t have cost very much. That’s the bright side.
Lastly, The DUFF. Umm, what? This also has a “fresh”, though barely, and it could slip by this weekend. McG’s career has been one slow decline into irrelevance, which is disappointing, as I actually enjoyed the Charlie’s Angels series. He’s only producing here, but with first time director Ari Sandel as the actual director he had to have had his hands all over it, no? I like Mae Whitman from “Arrested Development” but it’s not like she’s a “name” lead. This has very little buzz, I haven’t even seen a trailer, and I think even my $8.8 million could be pushing it.
Now that we’ve considered the box office, a programming note: please tune into our Oscar live blog on Sunday! It’s going to be flat-out hilarious.
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
