Box Office Predictions – Weekend of Mar 18

Hello again readers — guess who’s back on the box office beat this weekend? It has been another demanding semester at school for me, so I have not been writing this column as regularly as I should be, but now that I’m on Spring Break, there is no excuse for not posting predictions. So let’s get into it, why don’t we?

This weekend is the most up-in-the-air at the box office we’ve seen in a while. Depending on who you talk to, each of the three wide releases could open anywhere between $5 million and $20 million, creating quite a competition. While this may not interest a great deal of laymen — neither Paul nor Limitless nor The Lincoln Lawyer can be counted as “big ticket” films — the race is certain to make or break many box office junkies’ reputations. But one thing is for sure: the competition is likely to be for the #3 slot, as holdovers Battle: Los Angeles and Rango are likely to remain in first and second place, respectively.

As for the new releases, I’m predicting all three come within a meager $500,000 of each other (that’s got to be some kind of record if it comes true, right?). This means my call as to which film will win out is pretty meaningless — such a small margin of victory makes the art of prediction downright arbitrary — but I’ll make one anyway. Ultimately, I think Matthew McConaughey’s The Lincoln Lawyer will take the “coveted” #3 slot.

The big news on The Lincoln Laywer is a certain Internet promotion that distributor Lionsgate is running in conjunction with Groupon: a promotional code that can be redeemed on online-ticketing service Fandango (which mainly facilitates transactions for Regal, former Loews theaters now run by AMC, and Carmike) for $6/ticket. Proponents say this will expand interest in the film, perhaps leading skeptical viewers who would not have normally gone to go see it at a reduced price. Not to mention: how many codes will be purchased and redeemed, adding to the box office toll, but then not acted upon? Detractors, on the other hand, say this signals internal tracking at the studio isn’t good and the promotion is their last ditch effort.

I’m assuming that the pros and the cons of the Groupon promotion cancel each other out and I can predict the film’s gross just like any other. The first comparison I can think of is McConaughey’s only other recent R-rated release, which also dealt with a sleazy main character: Two for the Money. That film opened to $8.7 million back in 2005, or $9.8m adjusted for inflation. Where the comparison fails, however, is that Two for the Money was trashed by critics, which is almost always a detriment when your target audience is older. The Lincoln Lawyer, on the other hand, is receiving fantastic reviews despite its seemingly limited artistic ambitions, with 86% on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment, 22 reviews counted. In this case, perhaps better comparisons are the similarly R-rated, but low-key and well-reviewed We Own the Night ($10.8m / $11.5m inflated) and Michael Clayton ($10.4m / $11.1m inflated). Averaging all three films’ openings to make a final prediction, I get $10.8 million for The Lincoln Lawyer.

Next in line is the similarly difficult-to-predict Paul, the geek-comedy starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The British duo has made two films together before, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but both received sizably smaller releases, so making a direct comparison is tough. My best attempt is to take the final earnings of Hot Fuzz ($25.1m inflated to 2011 dollars), a movie which ultimately received broad exposure by the time it ended its run, and manipulate that for a more front-loaded release, assuming the opening weekend is 40% of total box-office. That would give Paul an opening weekend of $10m. But I will also factor in other comparisons for balance. Two examples spring to mind. First, last year’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which, despite being PG-13 where Paul is R rated, had a similarly “geek-based” audience, grossing $10.6m in its opening weekend. Second, recognizing that this is an R-rated buddy-comedy, I would also consider the average of the openings for the Harold and Kumar pictures which, accounting for inflation, is $10.7m. Averaging all of those comparisons, I get $10.4 million for Paul’s first weekend.

Trailing by an insignificant margin will be Limitless. This is yet another tough movie to find reliable comparisons for, as it has a superhumar / sci-fi bent and stars big actors (Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro), but it is being sold as more of a straightforward action-thriller and is by no means an “event movie.” The two major comparisons I can think of are Push, which was put out by a similarly young distributor (Summit, where Limitless is Relativity), and Timeline. The former Chris Evans vehicle opened to $10.1m in 2007, $10.35m accounting for inflation. The latter Paul Walker picture made $8.4m in 2003, which comes to $10.1m in today’s dollars. Average the two and round to the nearest hundred-thousand and you magically come up with $10.3 million for Limitless.

As many have said on the Hollywood Stock Exchange forums, it is weekends like this that separate the great box office prognosticators from the rest. I’m erring on the conservative side of predictions, but whatever the outcome, it will sure be an interesting weekend to watch.

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

1. Battle: Los Angeles … $15.6m ($4,565 PTA) -56.1%
2. Rango … $13.8m ($3,591 PTA) -38.9%
3. The Lincoln Lawyer … $10.8m ($3,990 PTA)
4. Paul … $10.4m ($3,713 PTA)
5. Limitless …. $10.3m ($3,737 PTA)
6. The Adjustment Bureau … $7.5m ($2,825 PTA) -35.3%
7. Red Riding Hood … $5.6m ($1,848 PTA) -60.0%
8. Mars Needs Moms … $4.5m ($1,444 PTA) -34.9%
9. Beastly … $2.9m ($1,602 PTA) -42.2%
10. Hall Pass … $2.7m ($1,417 PTA) -46.1%