January 6-8, 2012 Box Office Results

Weekend of January 6-8, 2012

The Devil Inside – 23.0 est – My prediction: Under – 33.7 act – Over

And The Devil Inside swoops in to shock the domestic box office. Only one person predicted correctly on this one. Good job Randy.

I asked Randy in-person why he chose Over on the movie and he said because people love exorcism movies and the found footage stuff. I speculated that the movie also did well because there haven’t been any major new releases in the last two weeks. It’s the third highest opening for any film in January, behind Cloverfield and Star Wars Special Edition, and the fifth best debut for a supernatural horror film ever. One thing going against it was the dreadful number of reviews (7% on Rotten Tomatoes, 23/100 on Metacritic, and 4.2 on IMDb). The movie made 50% of its weekend gross on Friday alone, which probably shows that the movie won’t carry well. That’s okay though because I’m sure Paramount already sees this as a big win seeing as how the film only cost them $1 million. I’m sure there will be a sequel.

Other than that, M:I 4, Sherlock 2, and Dragon Tatt are holding up well. The Iron Lady has been kicking butt at per theatre average, averaging $35,275 at five theatres.

We’ll have three wide releases this weekend. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast re-release in 3D will be out in about 2,500 theatres. After The Lion King 3D’s major success, we might see some decent numbers for this one. Contraband starring Marky Mark will also see a major release, as well as the awful choir movie Joyful Noise.