Thor grosses $25.7 million on opening Friday, looks headed for $65-72 million debut weekend.

It was pretty much a foregone conclusion once the midnight numbers were released, but Marvel's Thor has opened with a rock-solid $25.7 million for its first Friday. The film is polling at a 'B+' from Cinemascore, with an 'A' from audiences under 18. The film did about 12% of that from midnight showings, which is normal for such fare. Where it goes from here is an open question of course. Non-sequels that did the 12% of their Friday grosses on midnight or Thursday night (Avatar and Inception for example) had weekend multipliers of about 2.8x, which would give Thor a hearty $72 million. But even a slightly front-loaded 2.6x would give the picture $65 million, which still feels like the likely end result for the Fri-Sun period. The other two major openers, Something Borrowed and Jumping the Broom, opened with $4.8 million and $4.1 million respectively, so both should gross around $12 million for the weekend. More to come once the weekend numbers roll in (although my analysis may be a little later than usual, due to the whole Mother's Day celebrations and what-not).

Scott Mendelson

Thor grosses $3.25 million in midnight sneaks, appears headed towards $43-72 million for the weekend ($65 million sounds about right).

With pretty much every major summer tentpole doing the whole 'midnight screening' thing this season, it's going to be that much easier to predict the weekend even earlier. So with that, we can report that Marvel's Thor (review) has opened with $3.25 million in midnight sneaks last night. As I've written before, a film that goes wide at 12:01am generally makes between 5% and 6% of its opening-weekend take in midnight screenings. There are exceptions (Avatar and Fast Five pulled in around 4.5% of their Fri-Sun grosses in 12:01am screenings), but 5-7% seems to be a healthy average. So with that in mind, assuming that Thor is inexplicably front-loaded (unlikely as its not a sequel) and/or suffers from poor word of mouth (also unlikely, as the film is pretty fun and satisfying), let's assume that Thor does about 5% of its opening weekend grosses at midnight. That would give Thor a $65 million opening weekend take. Playing the averages, Thor could gross anywhere from $43 million (7.5% in midnight sneaks, or a likely worst-case scenario) to $72 million (a best-case scenario 4.5% in midnight sneaks). We'll know more when the Friday numbers come in, but for now, it looks like Paramount has pulled off another massive opening for a challenging franchise. For those who want a detailed look at the math regarding midnight screenings, go here.

Scott Mendelson

Review: Passion Play

Passion Play
2011
94 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Passion Play is a film that asks you to watch its lead character make one terrible decision after another and sympathize with him anyway. From the first frame of the film until the last, Nate (Mickey Rourke) exhibits atrocious judgment and a painful selfish streak, yet we are supposed to be on his side for the entirety of the picture. The opening scene of the picture has him about to be shot dead in a desert for sleeping with the wife of a known mob boss. As Passion Play unfolds, one can't help but wonder if everyone involved would have been better off if Nate had just taken two in the head.

Press Release: Star Wars: the Complete Saga on Blu Ray

Bring home the adventure and share Star Wars™ with your whole family – when STAR WARS: THE COMPLETE SAGA comes to Blu-ray Disc from Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment! To be released beginning on September 12 internationally and on September 16 in North America, the nine-disc collection brings the wonder of the entire Saga direct to your living room, where you can revisit all of your favorite Star Wars moments – in gorgeous high definition and with pristine, 6.1 DTS Surround Sound. Dive deeper into the universe with an unprecedented 40+ hours of special features, highlighted by never-before-seen content sourced from the Lucasfilm archives.

The specs after the jump:

Green Lantern gets a second (this time plot and character-centric) trailer.

This is almost anticlimactic after a month that saw a four-minute Wondercon clip and two extended TV spots, but here is the official second trailer for Green Lantern. This clip is obviously much less jokey than the infamous teaser, and it clearly lays out the intergalactic scale and the world-threatening scope of the picture. It also gives some badly needed face time to the human supporting cast, notably Peter Sarsgaard as primary villain Hector Hammand, Tim Robbins as his father, and Angela Bassett as Dr. Amanda Walker. Blake Lively is still being hidden from view as much as possible, which can't be a good sign. The key issue remains the same as the other released footage: next to no actual scenes of Ryan Reynolds in action as the Green Lantern. It's still the same helicopter rescue, gattling-gun scenes that we've seen before. Of course, there's still six weeks to go, with the special effects burden adding $9 million to the budget, but you'd think Warner would want to show off footage of Hal Jordan kicking butt? And I'm frankly a little shocked that we haven't seen what should be the money shot (if it exists): countless Green Lanterns flying through space and/or doing battle with Parallax. As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Review: Thor: A 3D IMAX Experience

Thor
2011
115 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Despite Marvel and Paramount's best marketing efforts to convince otherwise, Kenneth Branagh's Thor is a perfectly satisfactory piece of popcorn entertainment. It is cheerfully silly and openly operatic, but played out with absolute conviction. It is no great landmark in the realm of comic book films, but it is easily the best of the Marvel-financed films thus far released. It has larger than life action with human-scale emotions, and Branagh directs with an unexpected confidence that seeps through the finish product. It is no great piece of art nor defining statement of our times, but its good-natured pomp makes its obvious flaws almost endearing.

Review: Hobo with a Shotgun

Hobo with a Shotgun
2011
85 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

It's a cardinal rule of mine to always critique the film that is presented in front of me, and not the film I wanted to see. It doesn't matter if the what-if? scenarios in my head for The Matrix Revolutions were more interesting that what ended up being made, I can only judge the film that was released as it was released. So I walk a tightrope when discussing Jason Eisner's Hobo with a Shotgun. The film basically delivers what it promises, with hardcore schlock possessing a genuine 1970s grindhouse sensibility and horrifying violence to match. But the picture is so relentlessly over-the-top and lacking in any real subtext or 'point' that the film becomes just a glorified snuff film. But there remains such potential for a genuinely compelling social critique that I cannot help but think of the slightly less extreme but more relevant film this could have been.

Review: The Beaver

The Beaver
2011
90 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

The Beaver is a film hamstrung by an inability to settle on just which story to tell, and how exactly to tell that story. The film basically concerns a suicidal husband/father who apparently adopts another personality through the guise of a stuffed puppet. But director Jodie Foster and writer Kyle Killen constantly bounce back and forth in terms of telling the story through his eyes or through the eyes of his family and coworkers. As a result, there is a constant shift of narrative focus and every nearly major character gets shorted. There is fascinating material on display, with some truly fine performance work to boot, but the whole ends up far less than the sum of the occasionally exceptional parts.

Weekend Box Office (05/01/11): Fast Five opens huge, everything else crashes.

Kicking off summer 2011 a little earlier than usual, Fast Five (review) raced into the record books with a massive $86.1 million opening weekend take. The film has the biggest opening weekend of 2011 (opening with more than the second and third biggest combined), the largest Fri-Sun take in Universal history (beating The Lost World: Jurassic Park's $72.3 million opening), the biggest April opening (beating Fast and Furious's $71 million opening two years ago), and easily clinching the record for the biggest opening weekend for a fifth film in a franchise. It bested the $80 million three-day take of Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones and the $77 million three-day take of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but those two films (as well as The Lost World) opened as parts of a four or five day weekend. With all the whining about 'slumps', I've constantly argued that it was merely a case of smaller, cheaper movies playing to smaller crowds. Well a major movie was unleashed this weekend and audiences responded accordingly. An unexpectedly terrific mass-market entertainment just opened unexpectedly well, which is good news all around. Well, Marvel and Paramount probably aren't too thrilled. This may be a case of the summer kick-off film overshadowing the bigger May giants coming around the corner (I wrote about this phenomenon back in 2008), so Thor (which has already grossed $93 million overseas) is now in a pickle for next weekend, as it just went from the summer kick-off film to the often-cursed second-out-of-the gate (it thought it was Iron Man, but now it may be Speed Racer).

Friday box office (04/29/11): $33.2 million for Fast Five, $79-83 million weekend debut likely. Prom and Hoodwinked Too under-perform.

With an opening day that is bigger than all-but two live-action opening weekends this year (Battle: Los Angeles's $36 million opening and The Green Hornet's $33.5 million debut weekend), Fast Five kicked off the summer movie season in high style. The film pulled in just 11% of its opening day tally in midnight screenings. If the picture performs with the same 2.4x weekend multiplier as Fast and Furious ($30m/$72m), it's got an $80 million opening weekend on tap, bigger than the two largest opening weekends of 2011 (Rio and Rango) combined, nearly $10 million higher than the last picture, the record for an April debut, and the biggest three-day opening in Universal's history (the prior record holder is The Lost World: Jurassic Park with $72.3 million). Obviously we'll know how it plays tomorrow, but I'm personally expecting a less frontloaded picture than the previous entry, if only because it's a much better film (although that may not be a factor until next weekend). There's nothing breathtaking about a well-marketed sequel in a popular franchise performing in line with expectations, but it's still nice when a good genre film opens well. Prom made just $1.8 million while Hoodwinked Too grossed just $1.1 million. I don't know how much Dylan Dog: Dead of Night made on just $270,000 on 875 screens.

Scott Mendelson