Weekend Box Office (07/08/12): Savages debuts well, Katy Perry does not, as holdovers get holiday boost.

I've already allotted five paragraphs to The Amazing Spider-Man, so it's time to discuss the other films.  There were two other wide openers this weekend.  Oliver Stone's Savages debuted on Friday of the holiday weekend, proving to be relatively successful counter-programming.  The $45 million hard-R drug thriller earned $16.2 million.  Considering most of the stars (Blake Lively, Salma Hayek, Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, and Benicio Del Toro) are not box office draws, the director was the main attraction here.  While supporting player John Travolta probably helped a bit, this was Oliver Stone's unofficial return to gritty, adult-skewing genre fare.  World Trade Center, W., and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps were exactly kids flicks, but the unapologetic auteur behind Platoon, JFK, and Natural Born Killers hadn't been seen since Any Given Sunday back in 1999 .  As such, it stands as the third-biggest debut of his career, behind World Trade Center ($18 million) and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps ($19 million).  With a C+ from Cinemascore (it's arguably worse than that, sadly, highlighting boring youngsters over entertaining grownups while being a good 50% longer than it should be), it won't be reaching the heights of Platoon ($138 million) or the $70-$75 million range of Any Given Sunday, JFK, World Trade Center, and Born on the Fourth of July.  Coming anywhere near the $50 million mark (Natural Born Killers) will count as a win for Universal, which probably should have moved this one to July 13th after they moved the unexpectedly successful Ted to June 29th.

Thursday box office: Katy Perry: Part of Me 3D debuts with $3m while The Amazing Spider-Man now sits with $75m.

So The Amazing Spider-Man heads into the Fri-Sun weekend with $75 million after three days.  There is little to speculate at this point.  All relevant mathematical precedents (Transformers, Transformers 3, Spider-Man 2, War of the Worlds, etc.) point to The Amazing Spider-Man ending its six-day weekend with around $140 million.  I'll discuss whether that's good or bad come Sunday (it's a little complicated), but for now the film is no outright flop and probably will encourage other studios to consider rebooting their cherished properties sooner rather than later.  Alas... Anyway, the first day for Paramount's 3D musical documentary, Katy Perry: Part of Me, earned $3.1 million today.  That's obviously closer to the $4.9 million that Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience earned on its opening day (a Friday, natch) as opposed to the $12 million that Justin Bieber: Never Say Never earned over its debut Friday.  Even if the Katy Perry espionage thriller ends up closer to the $11 million that Glee 3D grossed versus the $72 million finishes of Michael Jackson: This Is It and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, the film cost just $12 million to make and may-well become a popular slumber-party rental for the next year or so.  I make no promises about updating in regards to Friday numbers, but I'll have the full analysis for Peter, Katy, and Ollie (Stone) come Sunday.

Scott Mendelson