Thursday, December 23, 2010

Wednesday Box Office: Little Fockers opens soft(ish), True Grit and Tron: Legacy battle for number two.

Little Fockers was number one at the box office over the first day of the five-day Christmas holiday. But it was a much tighter race than expected, as True Grit held its own and Tron: Legacy remained steady. Little Fockers, the much-unanticipated finale to Fockers trilogy ('This Christmas... the journey ends.'), debuted with $7.2 million. By any normal standards, this would be a solid Wednesday debut for a comedy. But Meet the Fockers (a film that wasn't insanely anticipated either six long years ago) opened its Christmas long-weekend with $12.2 million. That film, which had much better reviews, ended up with $70 million by the end of the long weekend, or a 5.7x weekend multiplier. Should Little Fockers follow suit, it will end the long-weekend with $41 million, or about $5 million less that Meet the Fockers made in the Fri-Sun portion of its opening weekend.

The other major opener was True Grit, which showed just that with a solid $5.5 million opening day. The Coen Brothers western should play steadily all weekend, as it's a fine and compelling mass-audience picture. Paramount is hoping for a solid 5.5x multiplier, which would put the film just over $30 million for the weekend. Tron: Legacy pulled in another $5.6 million, which means that it will be a constant race for second place (or first place if Little Fockers crumbles) over the whole weekend. Tron: Legacy is still performing like an inflation-adjusted variation on King Kong, minus the extra $15 million that King Kong got by opening on a Wednesday. King Kong has a 6.5x weekend multiplier over the Wed-Sun portion that made up its second weekend. A similar 6x multiplier would give Tron: Legacy $33 million between yesterday and Sunday and a ten-day total of about $89 million.

It will be interesting to see how well both of the films play to families, as Tron: Legacy is a PG-rated film that looks (in the ads) like a hard-edged PG-13, while True Grit is a PG-13 western that looks R but, save for one moment of brutal and graphic violence and some emotionally-disturbing end-of-film violence, almost could have snuck by with an 'Attack of the Clones PG'.

Scott Mendelson

2 comments:

Little Fockers movie said...

The little fockers is a great movie, the plot may not be the best and nothing is really new about the fockers family but the actors are great and makes you want to see the next movie as well!

Little Fockers movie said...

The little fockers is a great movie, the plot may not be the best and nothing is really new about the fockers family but the actors are great and makes you want to see the next movie as well!

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