Friday Estimates: Star Wars is Top of the Class of 2015 with $686.43 Million
January 2, 2016
It took just 15 days for Star Wars: The Force Awakens to overtake Jurassic World’s final domestic box office. On Friday, the film earned an easy first place with $34.46 million to push its running tally to $686.43 million. Not only is this the best domestic box office for a film released in 2015, it is more than enough to overtake Titanic and push it into second place All-Time. As for the film’s weekend projection, we are looking at a $95 million weekend, plus or minus $5 million. It is possible the film could crack $100 million over the weekend, but very unlikely. That said, it has already broken a couple of major records—Fastest to $650 million and Biggest Domestic Hit of 2015—and will likely break a few more over the weekend (Fastest to $700 million, Biggest third weekend, and Biggest January weekend).
The Hateful Eight bounced back on Friday and climbed into third place with $6.43 million. This is nearly double its Wednesday haul and also a bigger increase than I was expecting. Perhaps the word-of-mouth is helping more than anticipated. Or perhaps not enough people knew it was opening on Wednesday. If it is the latter, then Quentin Tarantino needs to talk to the people at Weinstein Co. for bungling the opening. (They moved the expansion date from January 8th to January 1st a few weeks ago, and then to December 30th shortly after that.) Quentin Tarantino literally saved the company with Inglourious Basterds. Additionally, Django Unchained is the company’s biggest hit of all time. Messing with your most lucrative director like this is unacceptable. Even so, the film should earn between $17 million and $18 million, which isn’t a bad first weekend in wide release for a film that cost $44 million to make. But it is below the $20 million to $25 million I thought it would open with before I saw its Wednesday number.
Daddy’s Home did better than expected with $11.48 million. It will earn roughly $30 million over the weekend and finish with very close to $100 million by the end of business on Sunday. It might become Paramount’s biggest hit of 2015. They could use the good news.
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Filed under: Friday Estimates, Star Wars Ep. VII: The Force Awakens, The Hateful Eight, Daddy’s Home, Star Wars, Quentin Tarantino