I am quite grateful that Fury, the new World War II tank-set drama starring Brad Pitt, didn’t bomb this weekend at the box office, mostly so I didn’t have to resist the urge to headline the pieces this weekend something along the lines of “Brad Pitt Tanks.” Anyway, David Ayer’s Fury is indeed a solid hit and the biggest movie of Friday (and presumably the weekend). The $68 million release from Sony, produced by QED International, LStar Capital, and Le Grisbi Productions/Crave Films, opened last night with a solid $8.8 million, including $1.2m worth of Thursday previews. As boring as it is when the new release lines right up with pre-release tracking, Fury is indeed on track to earn around $25 million for the weekend, which is about what was “predicted” going into the opening frame. Still, better to perform right within expectations than to have to explain a below-par debut. This is not a below-par debut.
The gruesome, R-rated war drama is another solid win for star Brad Pitt and this debut falls right in the upper-range of his “happy medium.” Moneyball opened to $19 million in 2011 while Burn After Reading opened with the same in 2008. In fact, Fury should be right at the “bottom” of his “big” opening weekends, because it’s bigger than everything outside of his appointed “blockbuster” entries. No one was expecting World War Z ($66m) or Mr. and Mrs. Smith ($50m), but this got a lot closer to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ($26m) or Inglorious Basterds ($38m) than most were expecting. Considering it had little sell beyond Mr. Pitt and the World War II setting (we can debate how much help his costars, Logan Lerman, Shia LaBeouf, and Michael Pena, were this weekend), this is a fine example of genuine old-school star power. It may not end up being the Oscar contender some may have been hoping for, but it’s going to be another solid adult-skewing R-rated hit for the Fall season.
For director David Ayer, this is easily the biggest hit of his (now five-film) directorial career. His biggest prior opening weekend was the $13 million debut of End of Watch, followed by the $12m debut of Street Kings and this year’s terrible $5m debut of Sabotage. His biggest domestic grosser remains End of Watch, and Fury should pass that (much cheaper) film’s $41m total by next weekend. In fact, Fury will pass the $26m domestic total of Street Kings by Monday or Tuesday at the latest and should pass the $10m domestic total for Sabotage by the end of this sentence. This is a big win for director David Ayer but par-for-the-course for writer David Ayer. This will be his third-biggest opening as a writer behind S.W.A.T. ($37m) and The Fast and the Furious ($40m) and just above the $22m debut for Training Day. Next up for Mr. Ayer is the just-confirmed Suicide Squad movie, which I am presuming will be his new biggest directorial opening weekend and (Warner Bros. hopes) his biggest debut as a writer as well.
The Book of Life, from 20th Century Fox, opened with a solid $4.95 million Friday. The $50m production from Reel FX earned mostly strong reviews (and with good reason) and is looking at an over/under $18 million debut. The romantic fantasy is loosely based around the upcoming “Day of the Dead” holiday and this opening will hopefully keep it playing strong into the actual “día de los muertos” on November 1st. The animated fable features the voices of Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, and Channing Tatum among others, is another solid $16-$19m debut this season for a family-friendly release in a season that has had quite a few of them. Considering Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day held up pretty well ($3.24m for Friday, around $13m for the weekend, or a 32% drop), this is a pretty strong sign that multiple kid-friendly movies that aren’t insanely expensive can thrive in the marketplace. Next up is the (presumably) much bigger Big Hero 6, from Walt Disney and I’m going to wager it will open a bit above the $16-$19m we’ve been discussing. Point being, along with The Boxtrolls and Dolphin Tale 2, there has been so much stuff to take my kids too that I’m almost glad Paddington got moved to January 16th, 2015.
The final new wide release was the Nicolas Sparks adaptation The Best of Me. The Relativity release, which cost just $26 million to produce, earned $4.14m last night, which should pave the way for an $11m weekend debut. That’s the lowest debut for a Sparks adaptation ever, which I suppose is a bad thing. But to be as fair as possible, James Mardsen and Michelle Monaghan (as much as we adore them) are not big box office draws and the film lacked anything resembling a date night-friendly release date. Yes, Safe Haven, starring those box office dynamos Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel, opened with $21m, but it had the advantage of a Valentine’s Day weekend in 2013. If anything, the 41-year old Mardsen and the 38-year old Monaghan were old enough to target the adult-skewing audience that was already flocking to Gone Girl, The Judge, and Fury. I’m sure the publicity surrounding Sparks’s lawsuit which outed him as (allegedly) a “not very nice guy” didn’t help, but let’s see a more star-filled Sparks adaptation performing this poorly before we assume the brand is damaged. This one is a miss, but it’s also not that big of a deal, so let’s move on.
There were two big platform debuts this weekend. Fox Searchlight unleashed the critically-acclaimed Birdman into four theaters this weekend and the Michael Keaton showbiz-centric comedy soared accordingly. The film earned $135,602 on its first Friday, setting the stage for a $410k Fri-Sun frame and a scorching $95-$105k per-screen average depending on the final weekend figure. I’ll go into the figures once we have a per-screen average to work with, but this will be the second-biggest per-screen average of 2014 behind The Grand Budapest Hotel (which earned an eye-popping $811k on four screens this past March). Alejandro González Iñárritu’s dazzling picture is quite-simply one of the best films of the year. Also debuting in limited release is Dear White People. Writer/director Justin Simien’s race-based comedy (and no, I’m not just saying that because it involves black people, it really is very much about race relations on an Ivy league campus) earned almost unanimously positive reviews (I had to miss the press screening due to family illness) and debuted on eleven screens from Roadside Attractions and earned around $125k yesterday, seting the stage for a $375k weekend and terrific $33k per-screen average. It should expand over the next few weeks, and I will see it as soon as it arrives to a theater near me.
In holdover news, Gone Girl earned $5.55 million on its third Friday, setting the stage for an over/under $18m weekend (-32%) and a terrific $107m domestic cume. With $94.8m as of yesterday, it should cross $100m domestic sometime this evening. The Judge, from Warner Bros. (Time Warner Inc.) dropped 45% from last Friday, earning $2.4m and bringing its domestic cume to $21.53m. Anabelle dropped 54% from last Friday (again pretty solid for a horror film) and brought its cume to $68.7m. Universal’s (Comcast Corp.) Dracula Untold is going to drop a somewhat expected 65% from last weekend’s robust $23m debut weekend, having earned $2.9m last night (-65% from last Friday) and bringing its cume to $33.75m. It should end the frame with around $8.5m and around $39m total. The Equalizer earned another $1.56m last night, setting the stage for a $5.5m weekend and $89m cume. The Maze Runner earned $1.25m yesterday and should top $90m by the end of the weekend. Lionsgate’s Addicted earned $1.1m yesterday to bring its total up to $10.5m. Jason Reitman’s Men, Women, and Children expanded to 608 screens but earned just $99,000 for the effort. In one-weekend-wonder news, Meet the Mormons will likely drop around 71% on its second weekend, having earned around $290k yesterday for a probable $715k second weekend and (still not-unimpressive) $4.75m domestic cume.
Link
http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2014/10/18/box-office-brad-pitts-fury-shells-8-8m-friday/
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