Friday Box Office: 'Gravity' Earns $17.5m, Rockets Towards $50m
Scott Mendelson, Forbes
Well, the good news for George Clooney is that Batman & Robin is probably no longer his biggest opening weekend. And Sandra Bullock probably has a new record opening weekend too, which would be her fifth such “record” in her last seven films (a stunning statistic I’ll go into tomorrow). But poor director Alfonso Cuaron, he’ll have to settle for Gravity being his second-biggest debut behind the $93m opening of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Yes, Gravity is indeed skyrocketing way past even reasonable expectations, with $17.525 million on Friday alone. Considering how not front-loaded it was on Thursday (just $1.4 million), it stands to reason that this one is going to play like an old-school hit film. If it makes it to 2.86x for the weekend, it’ll top $50 million.
Of course that’s not a guarantee, even with stellar word-of-mouth and a 91-minute running time. But even if it ends up with just 2.75x for the weekend, it still gets to a superb $48 million. If it actually makes it to 3x, we’re looking at a $52.5m debut weekend, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It may not surpass Paranormal Activity 3‘s October record $52.56m debut or even the $50.2m haul of Jackass 3, but it could. It will surely end up as the best non-sequel debut in this month of horror (The Grudge, with $39m back in 2004). Speaking of which, it will be interesting to see what, if any, advantage the film picks up this month by virtue of being the closest thing to a horror film we’ll get outside of the October 18th remake of Carrie. While not traditional horror, Gravity is likely to be the scariest film of the month.
Obviously it’s way too soon to talk long-term results, but for the moment let’s just celebrate a superb opening day for what is my favorite film of the year. Moreover, it’s a rare event: A big movie that is both terrific and absolutely demands to be seen on the biggest IMAX 3D screen you can find. Gravity earned $3.6m of its Friday haul (20%) in IMAX screens, giving a solid boost to the company and to those who actually want 3D to succeed. It’s also a clear example of the pull of real star power, as Bullock and Clooney did their job plugging the movie to general moviegoers who otherwise might not have flocked to a 3D space thriller. Anyway, the rest can wait until we see how high Gravity flies. But for now, if you haven’t seen it, go see it.
The other wide release was 20th Century Fox's Runner Runner. The $30 million overseas online poker thriller stars Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck, and was given a relatively light push. As somewhat expected, the poorly reviewed pot-boiler earned just under $3m on Friday for an over/under $8 million weekend. But it’s already opened overseas and pulled in around $15m thus far. So long-story short, it’s a miss in America, but it will make its money back thanks to foreign grosses. As I wrote yesterday, this is both the kind of old-school pulp star-driven thriller that was in short supply for awhile but also is the kind of movie that won’t lose a thing on DVD in five months. Pulling Strings, a bilingual romantic comedy from Lionsgate and Pantelion Films opened on 387 screens and pulled in $758,000 for its trouble. It’s no No Instructions Included box office-wise, but it’s good that these releases may start becoming a regular thing.
That’s enough for now. I’ll cover the holdovers tomorrow when the weekend estimates roll in. For now, go see Gravity!
