Box Office Predictions – Weekend of Jan 7

Hello again, loyal readers of this weekly column. As you may have noticed, I took a three month hiatus to redesign Bucket Reviews, as you see it now. But I’m back with fresh box office predictions, complete with analysis and comparisons, for the new year.

Like most early January weekends, this one does not bring many exciting new releases. In fact, if you don’t live in a city that welcomes the limited expansion of Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams’ highly-acclaimed indie drama Blue Valentine, you aren’t likely to be jazzed about either of the two new releases this weekend. They are: Season of the Witch starring Nicolas Cage, which reeks of a January dump in just about every way, and Country Strong starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Tim McGraw, which performed poorly as an awards-hopeful and now seeks a second chance with mainstream audiences.

When analyzing the odds that Season of the Witch will succeed, one need not look any further than a similar Nicolas Cage film released back in September 2006: The Wicker Man. While it technically avoided the reputed dumping-ground of August by a day, that turd was as Augusty (which is synonymous with January-y) as they come. The Wicker Man grossed a paltry $9.6m over its opening weekend–and it even had three things going for it that Season of the Witch does not: a four-day weekend, boosting Sunday grosses; a more inclusive PG-13 rating; and a built-in following of ticket-buyers, as it was a remake of a cult classic. Regarding the second point: while one could argue that Season of the Witch‘s R-rating may make it more attractive to some males between 17 and 25, it clearly excludes more than it includes. So look for it to open even lower than that $9.6m benchmark, perhaps closer to Cage’s R-rated Bangkok Dangerous, which opened to $7.8m in a similar number of theaters. But then again, even Bangkok, like The Wicker Man, opened on an inflated four-day weekend and had some degree of a built-in fan-base (for directors Danny and Oxide Pang). In other words, the situation really does not look pretty for Season of the Witch. It would not be surprising if the film grossed an abysmal per-theater average in the realm of other recent early-January disasters like In the Name of the King ($1,828) and Primeval ($2,474). But I’ll be an optimist and say it exceeds $2,500, giving it a total first weekend gross of $7.1 million.

Country Strong is a little bit more difficult to predict. The obvious (if not exactly ideal) comparison is last year’s Crazy Heart, which was likewise about country music and opened in limited release in December before going wide in January. Unlike that film, this one does not have major awards momentum and (likely as a result) did not have strong showings in New York and Los Angeles. But, to balance things out, it is likely to play better in Middle America due to the presence of big stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Tim McGraw (who carry more mainstream appeal than Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal). Not to mention, it has been advertised a lot on the major networks. So it will likely have a similar showing to Crazy Heart‘s biggest weekend of $6 million. (Despite the fact that it will play in nearly 50% more theaters than Crazy Heart, don’t expect it to rake in much more than this, because all the increased screen-count achieves at this level is more market-saturation, not more exposure.) Retaining my optimistic attitude, I will give it a modest bump and predict a $6.5 million weekend.

My prediction of what the full top 10 will look like:

1. True Grit … $18m ($5,762 PTA) -26.3%

2. Little Fockers … $12.1m ($3,290 PTA) -53.0%

3. Tron Legacy … $8.4m ($2,788 PTA) -55.2%

4. Season of the Witch … $7.1m ($2,516 PTA)

5. Country Strong … $6.5m ($4,565 PTA) +15,660%

6. The Fighter … $5.8m ($2,294 PTA) -42.0%

7. The King’s Speech … $5.7m ($7,519 PTA) -26.7%

8. Black Swan … $5.4m ($3,409 PTA) -39.2%

9. Yogi Bear … $5.2m ($1,582 PTA) -58.0%

10. Tangled … $4.7m ($1,972 PTA) -52.1%