Jurassic World certainly looks like the sort of film that would be frontloaded, but I’m going to zig when I’m supposed to zag and say it won’t be as terrible as the normal blockbuster. My reasons are twofold, first off I think the huge opening was another helpful marketing angle. Everyone has now heard, “Wow, a record?” and thought to themselves, “Well, maybe I should get some of that.” We’re really all just lemmings. Second, as it was a two-decade sequel and not on top of the original series I don’t think there was all that pent-up fan demand. The ticket sales came from people legitimately wanting a summer escape, not dying to know how their favorite Avenger ended up. So even though I’m calling it at over a 50 percent drop I don’t think it will be of the disastrous 60+ variety. My call is a tidy $100 million.
Inside Out is our next contender, and being Pixar it’s a relatively easy $60m-70m opening call. I’m going at the higher level of that spectrum because this is the first true “Pixar” film in years. Let’s not kid ourselves, Brave was a Disney movie. I like $76 million, but if there’s room anywhere, it’s to go higher, even though this won’t get a sequel bounce (unless all Pixar films are now sequels due to brand recognition?). I don’t love the Sunday or next weekend chances – it’s an adult movie in real life, but in this “school’s out!” environment it’s perfectly positioned for Friday and Saturday. $76 million would represent the third-biggest Pixar opening after Toy Story 3 and Monsters University.
The next film on on the board, Spy, is relatively uninteresting. Can I just predict it at $8.4 million and move on with my life? At $116m worldwide it’s hard to call this a huge success at this point, especially with a $65 million budget. Had they kept it around $30 million then maybe there’d be something to discuss? That’s what I would have done.
Theater counts for Dope are a mystery this morning so I’m going with a mid-range 2,000. If it’s more or less you can gamble a little. $8.5 million is where I come down, mostly due to a strong and targeted marketing campaign. Young people should show up, at least the ones who like real movies, and I’m guessing there’s about a million of them out there hiding from the Twilight crowd.
Now it’s your turn, predictions away!
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
