It's been awhile since we had a movie that justified running the 'midnight math', so let's make this quick.
John Carter grossed $500,000 worth of 12:01am shows last night. That's quite a bit under the $3-5 million that
most of last summer's tent-pole films were pulling in. Moreover, it's $3.1 million less than the midnight gross
for Tron: Legacy just over a year ago. While one may argue that school is in session so it may not be fair to compare, any number of major summer releases that debut in May or early June have to worry about kids still in school, to say nothing of the boffo
$3.7 million midnight debut for Fast Five last April. But, in the name of mercy, let's give a bit of leeway. Generally speaking, unless the film has hugely positive word of mouth (not likely), the amped-up audience just doesn't *need* to see it at midnight (probable), or is insanely front-loaded (let's hope not...) a genre film like this usually pulls in between 4.5% and 6.5% of its money via midnight shows. So under those circumstances, we'd be looking at a probable opening weekend for
John Carter of between $7.7 million and $11.1 million. I honestly don't think that the opening weekend is going to be that bad, so let's play absolute best case scenario and assume that only the absolute hard-cores went last night. If we presume that the midnight showings made up between 1.5% and 2.5% of the weekend total, then that leaves
John Carter between $20 million and $33 million for its opening weekend (or, optimistically, about what
Prince of Persia did with its $500,000 midnight opening and $30 million Fri-Sun weekend back in May 2010). Still, if the midnight figures mean anything at all in calculating the opening weekend, and if
John Carter's midnight scores are in any way 'normal' for a big-budget fantasy tentpole, then Disney is in deep trouble...
Scott Mendelson
you can never really get exact numbers from midnight. acording to variety, based on early friday returns john carter will collect between 28-32 mil. so, it is up to 100 mil. in US. not great, but far better than other disneys mars film, mars need moms, which had 7 mil. openning and 40 mil. worldwide gross. on the other hand, acording to disney, thursday non US returns are 13 mil. this might result in 70-100 mil. for te whole weekend in non US territories. (excluding japan and china, they will come to play later) john carter heads to half billion worldwide gross, as it seems. far from being called a bomb. i would say, we will see more 250 mil. blockbusters in vein of john carter, which will be aimed at non US countries. it is a break through, though. one of the first blockbusters which shows that US is going to play less and less importance in a popcorn economy.
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