February 3-5, 2012 Box Office Results

Weekend of February 3-5, 2012

The Woman in Black – $16,500,000 estimate – My prediction: Over – $20,874,072 actual – Over
Chronicle – $14,000,000 estimate – My prediction: Over – $22,004,098 actual – Over
Big Miracle – $8,000,000 estimate – My prediction: Over – $7,760,205 actual – Under

Chronicle exceeded expectations and was the #1 movie of the weekend barely beating out Woman in Black. Phil, Ricky, and Randy got all of their guesses right.

Chronicle’s success shows that there is quite the demand for found footage movies. Bringing in a super powers subgenre allows the movie to be accessible to those who do not care for the scary found footage films.

The Woman in Black was barely beat by Chronicle. Based on a play, WiB’s good weekend probably has tons to do with Daniel Radcliffe starring in the film as 59% of the audience were female. That’s pretty significant for a horror film, which generally have a larger male audience.

Big Miracle opened in fourth place behind The Grey. Universal was hoping to see a small surge on Super Bowl Sunday for this film with women and children going to the theatre more, but it did not wind up happening. Thus, the movie went under estimates, though it was still close. This movie will definitely not carry as well as Dolphin Tale. I suspect that it’s largely in part to not having any children in main roles.

Four big releases this weekend. First up is the family adventure film Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. I’ve seen a little bit of marketing around this and having The Rock star will probably help. It is a sequel to 2008’s Journey to the Center of the Earth which only opened to $21 million opening weekend, but went on to earn over $100 million domestically. Still, that was in mid-July as opposed to mid-February. Next is Safe House starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds. This film was on the 2010 Black List and is expected to have a good run. Then there’s The Vow which has all the parts of a Nicholas Sparks novel-to-film, except Nicholas Sparks. Still, the movie is trying desperately to make it look like it was, so we should see some decent numbers. Finally, Star Wars Episode I will be re-released in theatres in 3D. While the movie is fairly panned by critics and fans alike, it’s still Star Wars and you can never really count it out. The people who saw this movie as kids will probably want to see it again as adults in 3D. Think about it… if a boy saw it at age 9 in 1999, he would be 21 years old now. And trust me, the majority of boys who saw the film at that age loved it, despite Jar Jar’s stupidity. Call me optimistic, but I can see this one doing well.