January 27-29, 2012 Box Office Results

Weekend of January 27-29, 2012

The Grey – $14,500,000 estimate – My prediction: Over – $19,665,101 actual – Over
One For the Money – $10,000,000 estimate – My prediction: Under – $11,500,000 actual – Over
Man on a Ledge – $9,500,000 estimate – My prediction: Over – $8,000,000 actual – Under

Well, I had another poopy week. For the second week in a row, none of us predicted every movie correctly.

The Grey is Open Road Films’ first #1 debut, which is founded by movie theatres chains AMC Theatres (yay!) and Regal Entertainment Group (boo!). Their previous release, Killer Elite, only opened with $9.4 million at #5. Considering that The Grey’s budget was around $25 million, I would say that Open Road will be happy with their results. All of us predicted correctly on this one, except Tom. I think the $14.5 mil estimate was low for a movie starring Liam Neeson and having some pretty good buzz. Plus, Taken and Unknown came out during the same season and those did just over $20 mil.

One For the Money exceeded my expectations. I didn’t see any marketing for this film at all (probably because I don’t watch Oxygen, Lifetime, and WE tv), and Katherine Heigl being the only real star didn’t help. Exit polls showed that 79% of the audience were female and 74% were over 35 years of age. Box Office Mojo did release an interesting study that showed that the Groupon released for it were used by 11% of the audience. 93% of those people indicated that they would not have attended the movie otherwise. Yikes.

Man on a Ledge came out fifth this weekend with a disappointing $8 million despite being in almost 3,000 theatres. Having no major stars and a plot that seems to be rehashed from other films, this couldn’t have gone any worse. Odd thing is that I saw tons of commercials and trailers for this film, so I guess the dumb storyline really did have an effect on it. BOM has this great quote in their article that I wanted to share with you because I thought it was humorous: “Trailers and commercials jumped between Worthington out on the ledge and a corresponding heist in a nearby building, with the vague indication that the whole thing was part of some kind of revenge scheme. A confusing premise like that really can't compete with Liam Neeson fighting wolves, and so Man on a Ledge wound up the loser.”

Got three more wide releases and a limited release this weekend. Chronicle, which takes place in Seattle, is due out in about 2,800 theatres. It’s the found-footage film about the teenagers who get super powers. Sounds interesting, but could also be lame. Then there’s The Woman in Black which should see some nice carry thanks to Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe. Commercials have been freaky as heck and people seem to want more scares. The whale movie Big Miracle will see a wide release as well. I think this movie looks like a big piece of doo-doo. You could not pay me to watch this film. Still, Dolphin Tale grossed $94 million worldwide, so maybe there is a small demand for these types of films. I think Big Miracle would be better if the whales started attacking the humans. And finally Madonna’s second directorial film W.E. will see a limited release. It has already been nominated for an Oscar in costume design and won at the Golden Globes for Best Original Song.