Weekend Estimates: Turtles and Guardians Hold Off Newcomers
August 17, 2014
Three lackluster debuts have allowed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Guardians of the Galaxy to keep the top two spots at the box office this weekend. Turtles will be down a fairly modest 57% in its second weekend for $28.4 million, and $117.6 million in total after two weekends. Guardians will be down 41% in its third weekend for a total of $222 million, and will remain on track to become the highest-grossing film of the Summer. Things look much less pretty for the openers.
Let’s Be Cops is the surprise winner among the new releases, earning $17.7 million this weekend to take it to $26.1 million after five days. That’s a good enough number for a film that cost $17 million or so to make. The Expendables 3, however, is looking far less healthy, with $16.2 million in three days on a budget around $90 million. Although it will likely have decent overseas numbers, it’s hard to see how the film will end up as anything other than a major money loser. What that might mean for the proposed spin-off, The Expendabelles, is hard to say.
The final wide opener this weekend was The Giver. The dystopian sci-fi thriller will post about $12.7 million, and seems destined to disappear from theaters fairly quickly. Its modest $30 million budget will temper losses, but it probably won’t do much more than recover its marketing costs.
More cheery news can be found a little lower in the chart, with Boyhood making it to the edge of the top 10 (it might end up 10th, 11th or 12th depending on how final numbers play out). It will earn about $2.1 million this weekend for $13.8 million in total so far.
In limited release, three movies will be in the $10,000 club, based on the numbers we have this morning. The Trip to Italy will be top of the table with $71,577 expected from three theaters for an average of $24,000 or so. The Admiral: Roaring Currents will pick up around $500,000 in 30 theaters this weekend, for an average of $17,500. Finally, indie comedy Frank will pick up around $16,000 in a single theater on its debut weekend.
Bruce Nash bruce.nash@the-numbers.com-Thumbnail.jpg)
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Guardians of the Galaxy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Expendables 3, The Giver, The Trip to Italy, Let’s Be Cops, Boyhood, Frank