Box Office Predictions – Weekend of Jan 27

It’s that time of the week again, and I have box office predictions at the ready for the three films opening in wide release today. This weekend brings Liam Neeson battling wolves, Katherine Heigl bounty hunting, and Sam Worthington threatening to jump off a ledge – yep, it’s still January, all right. Additionally, because the Oscar nominations were released on Tuesday, you can expect some healthy jumps from those films that made the cut. Without further ado…

After the enormous success of Taken and Unknown, Liam Neeson has established himself as the king of the unexpectedly huge January opening. Accordingly, while industry tracking may have his latest, The Grey, pegged at a low-to-mid-teens weekend, I think it will do quite a bit better than that. Granted, The Grey is rated R, whereas Taken and Unknown were a comparably more accessible PG-13. But upon further research, that may not matter much. According to theater exit polling, just 11% of Unknown and 30% of Taken’s respective audiences were under age 25. That effectively means, with all other factors being equal, The Grey is only at risk to have a 10% drop on those films. And I think all other factors are, indeed, about equal – while The Grey may look more intense and artier than Taken and Unknown, it makes up for this with great reviews (significant to the older crowd) and strong Internet buzz. Plus, both of those films had solid legs and good CinemaScores (A- and B+, respectively), so there is no reason Neeson’s fans won’t return for this outing. Thus, I’m predicting The Grey has a stellar opening weekend of $21 million.

The other film that I think is being lowballed by box office prognosticators is Katherine Heigl’s One for the Money, which industry tracking suggests may make less than $10m this weekend. That would be an all-time low for Heigl since her career as a leading lady launched with 2007’s Knocked Up. Her lowest openings as a lead were 2010’s Life as We Know It ($14.5m) and Killers ($15.8m). Granted, both films teamed her with an equally popular male star (Josh Duhamel and Ashton Kutcher, respectively), whereas this one features relative nobody Jason O’Mara. The TV spots also don’t really sell it as a rom-com, which could potentially alienate Heigl’s established audience. This also differentiates it from the Jennifer Aniston/Gerard Butler vehicle The Bounty Hunter, which distributor Lionsgate should be trying hard to emulate if they want decent crowds. But in addition to Heigl’s track record, the movie has a couple other good things going for it… First, it’s based on a popular series of books, meaning it has a built-in audience. Second, Lionsgate is offering $6 tickets to see the film, via the discount website Groupon, which should boost numbers. In fact, I think One for the Money could come close to achieving the number that Lionsgate scored the last time it offered a Groupon deal – The Lincoln Lawyer’s $13.2m. I say “come close” because The Lincoln Laywer had strong reviews, which boosted its Saturday-Sunday totals, whereas One for the Money is probably awful (it isn’t screening for press). I’m marking it down for $12 million – not exceptional, but definitely better than most are predicting.

Summit pulled a similar $6 online deal with their opener, Man on a Ledge, but it’s not as sweet as One for the Money for two reasons: 1) you had to buy two tickets in a transaction, not just one and 2) it used MovieTickets.com as opposed to the more popular Fandango.  Then there are the other setbacks to the film… It has to directly compete with The Grey for the male audience, which seems to be leaning heavily towards The Grey… It is getting terrible reviews (current Rotten Tomatoes score: 19%)… And so on and so forth. Summit undoubtedly hopes they can pull Source Code’s $14.8m out of the hat again, but that’s looking increasingly unlikely. Instead, I’d say the best that Man on a Ledge can hope for is 2/3 of that for a $9.9 million opening.

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

1. The Grey … $21.0m ($6,593 PTA)
2. One for the Money … $12.0m ($4,384 PTA)
3. Underworld: Awakening … $10.8m ($3,509 PTA) -57.3%
4. Red Tails … $10.0m ($3,887 PTA) -46.8%
5. Man on a Ledge … $9.9m ($3,302 PTA)
6. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close … $8.0m ($3,042 PTA) -20.4%
7. Contraband … $7.0m ($2,646 PTA) -41.9%
8. Beauty and the Beast 3D … $4.8m ($2,238 PTA) -45.3%
9. Haywire … $3.8m ($1,557 PTA) -54.9%
10. The Descendants … $3.3m ($1,652 PTA) +39.1%