August 1 Weekend Estimates

Did The Smurfs 2 outsmurf the Wolverine?

Weekend Estimates August 1 Rank Movie TW % chg Total 1 The Wolverine $720,000 -43.8% $2,470,000 2 The Smurfs 2 $500,000 $500,000 3 Monsters University $495,000 -47.5% $9,433,000 4 R.I.P.D. $400,000 $400,000 5 Pacific Rim $343,000 -54.6% $3,686,000 The Wolverine and his abs took care of those dastardly blue creatures in a fight that turned out to be more of a beating than a 20 minute slogging. The Wolverine took control on Thursday and never looked back. It sliced through $200,000 on Saturday and Sunday despite having weaker pre-sales than Monsters University and The Smurfs 2. It was mostly unaffected by R.I.P.D. opening even with it sharing the same genre. WOM remains very high among users and is on par with Iron Man 3. After this weekend, it will be less than $900,000 away from X-Men: First Class. By next weekend, it will dump First Class and pass 3m. 3.5m is a lock and 4m might happen if it does not succumb to the Percy Jackson 2/Kick Ass 2 firestorm in 2 weeks. Among X-Men movies, this is the only movie in the franchise to fall below 50%. Even X-Men: First Class could not manage a drop below 50% on its 2nd weekend. If these estimates hold, it will own the best 2nd weekend drop of any superhero movie in 3D released in the past 3 years and the 2nd best of any superhero movie in the past few years behind The Dark Knight Rises. The Smurfs 2 cried all weekend long as it shocked many industry pundits by failing to win the weekend. A lot of people had astronomical expectations after the first did relatively well with solid legs but the market this year had been completely saturated with Hollywood animated films releasing week after week. Many studios moved their films away from August 1 thinking that The Smurfs 2 was going to be a major force but instead, families shunned the little blue people and took in another animated offering. Since June 20, there has been at least 1 animated release to come out every week. There were 7 animation movies that came before The Smurfs and after this weekend there will be 3 more with Planes finishing off the summer animation bonanza on August 22. For the most part, animation films have survived quite well this summer with many not seeing a major drop-off after another animation film lets out but it was a different story for The Smurfs 2. When Thursday pre-sales came out, The Smurfs 2 was leading but only by a slight margin over The Wolverine. Given that animation films have all seen unusually high pre-sales this summer, The Smurfs 2 was definitely in trouble. It finished Thursday with only 8,716 admissions, -51% from The Smurfs' opening day. Friday saw a Smurf decrease before it scooped up the best increase on Saturday. It was a tough battle for #2 but The Smurfs 2 may have just come out ahead thanks to its stronger Thursday and Friday. WOM is not as good as the other animation films so it will not see a Smurfs-like run this time around. Monsters University sharpened its scaring skills but the trick did not last long enough to top The Smurfs for #2. Falling over 50% on Thursday, it reversed its fortunes the next 3 days, slipping below 50% on all 3 days. With it managing to hold off The Smurfs 2 well, it should see an incredible hold next weekend with no major releases affecting it. It will pass 9.5m on Tuesday at the latest and 10m should come by 2 the end of the box office week 2 Wednesday's from now. It will become only the 2nd animated film to gross 10m after Toy Story 3 and only the 7th movie to do so ever. It was not a good weekend for the openers as R.I.P.D. also saw some hiccups in its opening weekend. R.I.P.D. got off to a weak start last week with sneaks, making only $11,000. It lead into Thursday's box office where it finished 5th in admissions but thanks to high 3D prices, it floated to 3rd in gross. Friday saw it slink up to 2nd but Saturday the 2 animation films passed it and it went down to #4. For Ryan Reynolds, it was another failure in the live action department. Green Lantern did below average in HK, not even making 1.5m. Buried made just $20,000 last year and Safe House grossed only $325,000. R.I.P.D. is getting massacred with WOM and it got slightly downsized this weekend by a number of theaters. 1m will not happen. It was another tussle for Pacific Rim this week as R.I.P.D. fought for the same demographic alongside The Wolverine. It did decently as it made nearly $350,000 for a total of 3.686m. WOM is still quite strong. It will cross 4m very soon and 4.1m could be its destination. Although it is not generating a whole lot of business in Europe, Pacific Rim is doing quite nicely in Asia where the mecha theme has made hundreds of millions in the past few years with the Transformers series and other standalone films. SDU: Sex Duties Unit got thrown out of the top 5 due to very high ticket prices. Although it beat Pacific Rim and R.I.P.D.'s admissions, it could not sustain its admissions placement in gross. It is being lambasted with putrid WOM but its weekend stats tell otherwise. This weekend it partied to an estimated $308,000 (-53%) for a 11-day total of $1,645,000. It's a pretty good weekend hold for a movie that is getting ripped to pieces. Next weekend it will have some local competition from The Way We Dance but their genres do not seem to overlap much so it could have another good hold. 2m should come in 2 weeks time. Despicable Me 2 has continued its breathtaking run with another very good hold. It slapped everybody else on Thursday with the best hold, easing just 16% but the drops grew larger with each passing day as Saturday ballooned to a 42% decrease. Another potentially worrisome characteristic it exhibited this weekend is that its walk-ins have diminished since Thursday. Doraemon: Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum defeated Despicable Me 2's walk-ins on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and it presents a possible fallout next weekend. Although there are no kid animation films scheduled for next week, this could be a signal that families are tiring of the minions. For its 5th weekend, Despicable Me 2 has tallied another $154,000 (-36%) for a surprising $3,876,000. Doraemon: Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum was supposed to be just another Doraemon film that made a simple $250,000 and went away. It turns out then that this weekend it passed $300,000 and entered Doraemon's all-time top 5 list. It has the best 2nd weekend of any Doraemon film in history and will at least break $500,000. It is also very likely to pass Seven Magic Users as the biggest grossing Doraemon movie in Hong Kong. Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum came away with an estimated $107,500 in its 2nd weekend, off 44%, for a great 2 week total of $385,000. Jay Chou's 2nd directorial film, The Rooftop, tried to gather audiences but was shunned by most. Most were not enticed by the subject matter and saw a different film instead. It made an estimated $111,500 in 4 days and was fairly frontloaded, having amassed 45% of business on Thursday and Friday. Secretly Greatly, one of the highest grossing films of 2013 in South Korea, was cast upon HK this week and it did fairly well. Bursting into 14 theaters, it captured an estimated $77,200. Its weekend turned out to be bigger than another recent hit, Miracle in Cell No. 7, and WOM is really good. This should be able to break $200,000 judging from its word of mouth and it could even make $250,000.