February 24-26, 2012 Box Office Results

Weekend of February 24-26, 2012

Tyler Perry's Good Deeds – $19,000,000 estimate – My prediction: Over – $15,583,924 actual – Under
Act of Valor – $17,000,000 estimate – My prediction: Under – $24,476,632 actual – Over
Wanderlust – $10,500,000 estimate – My prediction: Over – $6,526,650 actual – Under
Gone – $6,000,000 estimate – My prediction: Under – $4,770,360 actual – Under

While the numbers above aren't exactly blockbusting, the box office is still seeing a huge influx of movie goers. Overall, box office was up over $132 million this weekend, which is a 20% increase from the same time last year. Randy is the big winner for the weekend as he predicted every single movie correctly in our predictions pool.

A group of no-names, some active duty Navy SEALs, took down all the stars this weekend and so Act of Valor came out on top. If you look at the box office totals of the other new releases that came out this weekend, Good Deeds, Wanderlust, and Gone, you will find that Valor almost made as much as all of them combined. In just two days, it out-grossed 2009 Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker. The success of this film leans mostly on marketing who bought four Super Bowl commercial spots. I personally picked Under because I figured that the lack of star power would do it damage, but I was way wrong.

Tyler Perry's Good Deeds ended up being his second worst opening of all-time. I predicted Over simply because the majority of his films have made over $20 mil.

Wanderlust opened at a disappointing eighth place after months of being pushed back and pushed back. I happened to see lots of marketing for the film, which made me guess Over, but I neglected to look at the theatre counts and the R rating.

Gone came in right behind Wanderlust and earned less than $5 million, which is the lowest opening for a film this year. The terrible marketing and not having much of a cast other than Amanda Seyfried really did this one in.

Alright, coming up this Friday is Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, from the same guys who made Horton Hears a Who and Despicable Me. It's been a while since a big animated film has come out, so we might expect some good numbers out of this. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the R-rated party comedy Project X hitting theatres. It has a found footage sort of vibe to it while being produced by the guy who made The Hangover. Then there are some limited releases coming out. First up is Being Flinn which stars Robert De Niro and directed by Paul Weitz. Then there's the Iranian This Is Not a Film, which is a documentary about a guy under house arrest. That "film" actually comes out Wednesday. The interesting back-story to that film is that they had to smuggle the film out of Iran on a flash drive that was put in a birthday cake. After over two years, the quirky New Zealand film Boy will finally see some U.S. theatres. The Chinese film Let the Bullets Fly will see a few houses after becoming the highest grossing Chinese film of all-time. And finally, Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie will get a small release for those who love their brand of humor (me).