Bieber Fever Tops Friday Box-Office and Sets Sights on Surpassing Cyrus's Hannah Montana
Sandler and Aniston rom-com pulls in second
There was no question the 3D Justin Bieber biopic/concert film Justin Bieber: Never Say Never was going to make money this weekend. The question was a matter of how much, and after Friday's impressive $12.4 million haul it is in good position to dethrone Disney's 3D pop queen Miley Cyrus whose own concert film opened with $31.1 million back in 2008. However, there are a few glaring statistics that should be addressed before we really begin comparing the two.
First off, Cyrus's Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour opened in only 683 theaters compared to the 3,105 theaters you can find the Bieber pic in. Cyrus's film, however, was billed as a limited engagement signaling to fans to see it now or see it never. As Bieber fans now know, never say never, as the Cyrus pic eventually ran for 15 weeks, but never expanded larger than 687 theaters. Add to that the hiked ticket prices for the Cyrus flick and you have another factor to consider. However, I think it's safe to assume Justin Bieber's film wouldn't have done Cyrus numbers if you stripped 2,422 theaters from its opening run. Or perhaps you would like to argue it would have. If so, the comment section is directly below.
The question we now face is how high will the Bieber pic climb? $12.4 million on a Friday for a G-rated film tells me it should easily surpass Hannah Montana's $31.1 and likely gross over $35 million for the weekend. We'll know soon enough.
In second is the Adam Sandler comedy, which won't likely catch up to the Bieber pic. Just Go With It tallied an estimated $9.7 million and will likely end around $29 million or thereabouts. The A- CinemaScore says word of mouth is going to keep people filling the seats, eventually making for Sandler's twelfth film to surpass $100 million at the box-office by the end of its run.
Disney's Gnomeo and Juliet brought in an estimated $6.1 million and will hover around $19-20 million for the weekend while Focus's Roman adventure The Eagle opened with an estimated $2.8 million from 2,296 theaters looking at an estimate $8-8.5 million opening weekend.
I have included the Friday top ten estimates below and will be here on Sunday with a complete wrap-up.
- Justin Bieber: Never Say Never – $12.4 million
- Just Go With It – $9.7 million
- Gnomeo and Juliet – $6.1 million
- The Eagle – $2.7 million
- The Roommate – $2.6 million
- The King's Speech – $1.8 million
- No Strings Attached – $1.7 million
- Sanctum – $1.4 million
- True Grit – $950,000
- The Green Hornet – $885,000
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I think that if Justin's amount of movie theaters was limited to the same amount as Miley, he could never make as much as her.
Don't like any of the new movies, but just happy people are hitting the movies again. I know "Ceder Rapids" hit's KC next week, and am finally seeing TV ads for it.
Speaking of TV ads, anyone see the ones for "The Adjustment Bureau"? It's now a sci-fi movie? It was a drama/action flick about six plus months ago in the trailers. Does Universal have any idea what to do with this film?
One would think Never Say Never would pass $31 million given it's start, unless it is as frontloaded as Zach Efron's last movie was. But Deadline.com thinks it is heavily frontloade by pre-sales, and should drop 40% on saturday. Boxoffice.com thinks so, too, though they predicted NSN would only have a $17m opening weekend.
I still want Miley Cyrus' record to stand, so I have bought into some negative thinking about NSN's opening. But I should have realized that no project Miley is a part of has ever sputtered. Miley not only does a duet with Justin in this movie, she seems to have helped behind the scenes, too.
I saw Black Swan last night, loved it! But there was crowd of tweens I had to get through to get to my theater. Black Swan was incredible though. Arronofky and Fincher (and Nolan) should be head to head (to head) in the Oscar race.
I would think that Beiber film would be massively front loaded… There can't be much of any casual interest in it. You're either a devoted, crazed fan, or you're not.
Regardless, I'm kind of relieved to see he's not really any bigger than Cyrus was. Leading up to the release, he kept popping up on all of the New York late night shows… The Daily Show, Letterman, SNL, and I kept wondering, is his target demographic even up?
I'm still not sure that I've ever heard any of his music, which is odd because my car stereo is set to pretty much just pop/rock… So maybe I have and the DJ just never mentioned the artist? I have no idea. In any event, if he's just another kid's fad then I don't have to feel too old for being so completely unaware of him.
For a good time, watch Saturday Night Live March 5th. Hosted by Miley Cyrus, and featuring the music of The Strokes (probably something from their new album).
I'm aware of him but thankfully – Oh! So thankfully – I'm not remotely his target audience and have zero interest in him. I find his music appallingly bad, even for the standards of tween pop, but it hardly matters.
Otherwise, not much to get excited about. I'm not sure that Black Swan will be able to crack $100 million by Sunday after only posting $580,000 estimated on the Friday. It might have to wait til Mon/Tue to do it.
The King's Speech should follow it to that threshold by next Sunday as well hopefully.
Never Say Never review:
The two biggest things I learned from watching NSN was 1) that this kid IS definitely a normal kid, so people should climb down off his back, and cut him some slack, and 2) that not being a very young girl without a boyfriend, I am never going to be able to "get" the whole Justin Bieber thing. The kid has personality so he's not boring, but I don't get the attraction, and I don't get the music. The music doesn't seem special at all (only one rockcentric song). I didn't hate it but I believe the attraction is that if you like Justin, the music gets emotionally charged, and you like the music. I actually got a taste of this when Miley sang a duet of a Justin Bieber song, "Overboard". The lyrics and melody are actually a little silly, but I really like it BECAUSE Miley sings it and makes it sound good.
Btw, Miley is all growed up now, and has got it going on! And it was really fun watching Jaden Smith rap, knowing that Will Smith started out as a rapper. Usher's star power really comes across, too, which it doesn't neccessarily on a regular sized TV. Maybe we should be
watching American Idol on a huge screen? Overall, if you've been to concerts before, you should be able to recapture that concert exitement. I definitely think this film was worth the money, and the 3D did make it better. Fans of Justin might want to see it more than once.
I expect Just Go With It to take the #1 spot by sunday.
I don't want to sound like a douche, but Gnomeo and Juliet is not a Disney movie. It is Touchstone, but you can't put it in the same category as Tangled you know?
@Brad, Am I hearing correctly that NSN's reported friday's gross includes the money from that movie's wednesday preview? Because that would be outrageous.
thats not a correct comparision, if justins movie was released in the same amount of theatirs as miley, he will never beat miley, thats not a correct comparision.so he did not dethrone miley.