Box Office Predictions – Weekend of Aug 12

Welcome back to my weekly box office predictions column, where is the wake of getting Rise of the Planet of the Apes dead-on and The Change-Up way off last week, I’m hoping to score better than a marginal 50-50 this weekend. I have to run to a screening in 45 minutes, so let’s get right into the action…

The Help opened Wednesday and is already looking to have a promising start, having amassed $10 million by this morning, give or take depending on your source. That’s a rock-solid mid-week bow and suggests that despite the lack of a major movie star like Meryl Streep or Julia Roberts, The Help’s weekend frame should line up with those of fellow popular women’s book adaptations Julie & Julia ($20m) and Eat Pray Love ($23.1m). I’m inclined to say it will match the higher of the two because, although there is some front-loading from fans, the movie’s rare “A+” CinemaScore exit poll rating suggests that word-of-mouth will fuel a robust weekend turnout. So it shall be… $23.1 million is my official prediction for The Help.

But likely to take the coveted second place slot for the weekend (yes, Rise of the Planet of the Apes will once again top the charts) is the shock-you horror flick Final Destination 5, which is the series’ second 3-D entry. Reviews indicate the 3-D effects are special–the movie was directed by Avatar’s second-unit director–but will the movie really be able to retain 100% of its existing audience? I doubt it, especially given it faces formidable competition for the teenage male audience from the next movie I’m going to talk about. Plus, it’s a bit of an anomaly that this franchise’s revenues have increased at each new addition (with the exception of #2), as studios tend to put out cheap horror movies until audiences are absolutely exhausted with them (see the Saw franchise). Because of these factors, I will predict that Final Destination 5 is down 15% on its predecessor, giving it an opening of $23.3 million.

Next is 30 Minutes or Less (review coming later today), which re-teams director Reuben Fleischer and star Jesse Eisenberg, who first paired up on Zombieland. This is not as good a movie, but the viral marketing campaign (with radio spots featuring silly promotional report between co-stars Danny McBride and Aziz Ansari, for instance) has been pretty solid. But without the built-in zombie audience and accounting for the aforementioned competition from Final Destination 5, I’d say this bank robbery-based action-comedy would be lucky to do 25% less than Zombieland. That would give it a respectable opening of $18.5 million.

Lastly, you have the Glee 3D concert movie. Many prognosticators are quick to point out that the TV show usually comes in at under 7 million viewers weekly, putting the box office ceiling pretty low for the movie… Even if half of everybody who watches it for free showed up to see the film, your final take-away would only be $35 million. But given how cheap this was to produce and market, I’d say Ryan Murphy and co. are quite happy to do numbers in line with The Jonas Brothers concert movie, which opened to $12.5m and finished at $19.2 m. This shouldn’t be quite as front-loaded because it’s opening during the summer, when younger fans can make plans to see it on a weekday, so I think the opening:total ratio will be a bit lower. That would give Glee 3D an opening of right around $10 million.

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

1. Rise of the Planet of the Apes … $28.0m ($7,586 PTA) -48.9%
2. Final Destination 5 … $23.3m ($7,385 PTA)
3. The Help … $23.1m ($9,116 PTA)
4. 30 Minutes of Less … $18.5m ($6,406 PTA)
5. The Smurfs … $12.0m ($3,502 PTA) -42.0%
6. Glee 3D … $10.0m ($4,902 PTA)
7. Crazy, Stupid, Love. … $7.8m ($2,960 PTA) -35.1%
8. Cowboys and Aliens … $7.7m ($2,331 PTA) -51.0%
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 … $7.5m ($3,107 PTA) -39.7%
10. Captain America: The First Avenger … $7.2m ($2,540 PTA) -44.7%