'Alice in Wonderland' Storms to $41 Million at the Friday Box-Office
The March record will go down...
Looks like the current March opening weekend box-office record of $70.8 million, set by 300 back in 2007 is going to go down and go down big as Disney's Alice in Wonderland could surpass that number on Saturday night with a monster $41 million opening on Friday according to Box-Office Mojo. Just one more film taking advantage of the fact 3D ticket prices turn a film into a box-office juggernaut.
I've seen folks around the Internet predicting this thing to got anywhere from $100-120 million for the weekend, which would put it inside the top 15 all-time openings ever. Will it hit that mark? It's a tough call. The film is rated PG, which opens it to many more weekend audiences than if it were PG-13 or R, but with mixed critic reviews it's always hard to tell what word of mouth will be. The film sits at a 7.3/10 as voted by the IMDb community and over at RottenTomatoes, their community gives it a rating of 77% compared to the 53% critical response. I gave it a B- in my review and think it's well worth a watch and wouldn't be surprised to see it end up around $110-115 million for the weekend.
The weekend's other new opener is Overture's Brooklyn's Finest bringing in $4.7 million from 1,936 theaters and a likely $13-14 million weekend. The film did not enjoy very good reviews and I expect a lot of this is due to some great trailers that would have had me going to theaters regardless of critical reviews and it looks like many others felt the same. Good on yah, hope you liked it more than I did.
I have included the complete Friday top ten below Laremy will be here Sunday morning for a complete recap.
- Alice in Wonderland – $41 million
- Brooklyn's Finest – $4.7 million
- Shutter Island – $3.9 million
- Cop Out – $2.8 million
- The Crazies – $2.3 million
- Avatar – $1.9 million
- Valentine's Day – $1.4 million
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief – $1.3 million
- Dear John – $970,000
- Crazy Heart – $925,000
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Not expecting great word of mouth on this one, reaction from friends of mine so far has been kinda eh, but it's expected. It's another brand name, excessivley expensive studio flick designed to make money and then become instantly disposable.
Alice, I expect, will have a great OW, but its hold won't be nearly as spectacular. It'll drop at least 50% next weekend, if not more. It may not even reach $300mil. But $200 is in the bag and $250mil is very, very likely.
Oh, and congrats on Avatar for only having a -35% drop Friday-to-Friday. It may hold even better on Saturday once Alice's opening day is out of the way. But then it'll fall more on Sunday because of the Oscars, so it'll even out to about a -35% drop for the weekend.
I think the film will put out "New Moon" numbers- it'll just barely miss the $300 million mark, but it'll be the biggest live-action Disney film since "Pirates 3", easily.
I'll save my thoughts on the film for the What I've Watched tomorrow, but here's a taste: It wasn't all that great.
The only difference was New Moon wasn't showing in 3D. Back then the 3D screens were occupied by Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol.
This is feeling like a Monsters vs. Aliens 3.4 times opening final gross to me. Or at least 3 times it's opening. Little kid's only have this movie, and How to train your Dragon to choose from for quite some time (Diary of a wimpy kid is a bit eclectic). Even The problem filled The Spy Next Door did 2.4 times it's opening, and even the mega-frontloaded Valentine's Day will end up at twice it's opening.
Fast and Furious holds the record for the biggest weekend debut for a Spring release. I wonder if The Spring release record set by Fast and Furious will change hands too?
Um… sure it will. There's a $65k difference between the openings of 300 and F&F.
Box Office Mojo count anything in March and April as Spring, so the Spring record has already fallen. I'm thinking Fast and Furious will also lose it's April record, since Clash of the Titans will probably beat my preliminary expectations, because it's 3D, and because higher openings seem to be a trend.
Love the movie Burton did an awesome job. Johnny Depp was perfect choice for the Mad Hatter as was the Red Queen. I heard it was closer to $45M but they only seem to have estimates right now.
I don't use Rotten Tomatoes to define whether or not I go see a movie. Too many Critics not qualified and too many critics are bias in their response. I use my own Judgment with a little help from you of course. :)
What makes a critic "qualified"?
I'm thinking Alice will now land somewhere around $105-$110 million for the weekend. It largely depends on how it plays today (Saturday). Will it follow the typical event film path of a huge Friday followed by a drop on Saturday (I'm just talking a normal Friday-Saturday drop, not New Moon-style), or will family audiences hold the Saturday numbers up? This was the first event film of the year, Disney sold it as such, and it payed off. I do expect it to see the standard 50% or more fall next weekend, but that should still be enough to stave off the Twi-hards seeing Remember Me for a repeat at #1. I'll be curious to see how much of its percentage came from 3D. Avatar's always hovered around 80%, but it played in less total theatres, and thus a higher percentage of its total was 3D. Plus, it seemed that most theatres with both options only offered one 2D print of Avatar, which doesn't seem to be the case here. Still, the numbers clearly inflated by 3D. This film will have the biggest weekend over the period from Thanksgiving to the end of April (New Moon and Spider-Man 3 being the bookends), to go along with the March and spring records.
It's starting to become apparent to me that 3D for event films is going to make short term (i.e. days and weekends) box office records kind of meaningless. One big film will just top the next one, without any real sense of accomplishment because none of the records will stand for very long. Slightly off topic, but I'm starting to suspect that for Harry Potter 7-1, with the combination of 3D, the five-day numbers of the last two films, and the first Friday release since Goblet of Fire (a bump back to Wednesday seems unlikely given that school will be in), a $200 million opening weekend is a distinct possibility. But what kind of accomplishment would that be really, when the numbers are grossly inflated by 3D?
Also, Avatar looks to be set to take what I believe would be its steepest percentage drop yet. Is just because of the loss of 3D dollars, or have people finally lost interest because its now largely available only in 2D?
No, $200 million is really far-fetched. $150, maybe, but most lkely no more than that.
Probably the latter.
Family films always perform badly on weekdays outside school holidays. Saturdays and Sundays are when family films are at their strongest form in these circumstances.
Theaters in my city are currently charging less of a premium for 3D than they used to. I saw Avatar for only $11 at a matinee (I was surprised), and later found a 3D stand alone theater that only charged me $9 (they were making their money on popcorn). But I do think it's good for getting people into the theaters instead of waiting for the DVD, and it's good for some extra repeat business.
That's, uh, kind of pretty damn amazing. I think $100 million OW and $250 million overall are a given. If only I liked the movie enough to think it deserved those numbers. Because to me, it was a huge disappointment.
If only all the best grossing movies were worth their box office takings. I've gotten used to that by now.
For me, it's still kinda saddening each time it happens.
A movie could get mediocure reviews and STILL have big box office results. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen anyone?
Dear John, Valentine's Day, arguably Percy Jackson & The Wolfman, Shutter Island, probably The Crazies…and now Alice in Wonderland. It seems movies are starting to open above expectations lately. I don't know whether to put it down to a stabilizing economy, people simply in the habit of going to the movies more because of recent hits, or something else. But it seems to be a trend. Let's see if any of next weeks problem filled movies beat expectations, too.
Word of Mouth will be mixed, as not everyone likes the style of Tim Burton. Since it's Oscar night I expect it to fall through sunday for a $115M weekend. It will rack up $30Mil by weekday and take a 55% drop for a $50M second weekend. That, still, could help it reach $300M in the long run. One of the earliest box office successes of a year.
Last time I checked movies like these were in May.
Having seen Alice, I understand why it had a huge opening day. It was BRILLIANT. It makes Avatar look like The Flintstones.
Wow talk about being burned by playing it safe with my predictions instead of just going for broke! Last week, for instance, I underestimated AVATAR's staying power and promised myself it wouldn't happen again – this week I believed in James Cameron's juggernaut and it finally lost its steam. I also believed Brooklyn's finest had the steel to beat out Shutter Island for the #2 slot but I just didn't have the juevos to go out on a limb.
Oh well, next week…..
I don't really have that much interest in seeing Alice, but when I went to my local theater to see The Crazies, the lines were all the way from the inside of the theater to the parking garage, and thats a good half a mile. Every single showtime for the weekend was also sold out. So a 100+ mil. weekend might seem probable.