One Direction: This Is Us had a strong first official day, earning $8.9 million on its first 1.25 days, including $2.7m in Thursday showings. Yes, that means that the film did 30% of its business on Thursday night and yes it will be massively front loaded going into the holiday. But with figures like this, who cares? The $10 million concert documentary will A) make its budget back by the time you read this and B) become out gross every other Morgan Spurlock documentary combined by the afternoon (that’s a total of $12.5m, with $11m of that going to Super Size Me).
The film should end the four-day weekend with over/under $25m, good for the second-biggest Labor Day opening weekend of all time, behind the $30m debut of Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake and ahead of last year’s $21m debut of The Possession. So yeah, it may not reach the heights of Michael Jackson: This Is It (which debuted with $32m over five days but had surprisingly strong legs for a $72m finish), but it will out gross The Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience ($19m) and Katy Perry: Part of Me ($25m) by Monday or Tuesday. It looks like Mr. Spurlock is now due for a “one for me” project.
The second new Friday release, Warner Bros.’ The Getaway pretty much crashed with just $1.74 million for the day. The Ethan Hawke/Selena Gomez “cars go fast and crash” thriller produced by Dark Castle cost just $18 million, but it probably won’t even reach that in domestic ticket sales by the time all is said and done. This is merely a classic “Why did anyone think anyone would want to see this?” entry in the late August dump.
The other somewhat surprising bomb of the weekend is Closed Circuit. Now normally I wouldn’t call a low-key legal thriller with Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall a surefire hit, but Focus Features has had a periodic knack for successfully scheduling theoretically smart and adult genre fare on this very weekend, such as The Constant Gardner ($10m) in 2005, The American ($16.6m) in 2010, and The Debt ($12.8m) in 2011. This time around it is not to be, as the frankly not-very good potboiler earned just $511,000 since opening on Wednesday and will likely only rack up over/under $3 million for its six day opening weekend. The screen count is just 862, so we’re not looking at any lower-end per-screen records here, but it is a disappointing result for what I can only presume is a very inexpensive film (I don’t have official budget figures but I’ll update today or tomorrow if I can come upon them).
The most successful limited release of the weekend will be Lionsgate’s debut of Instructions Not Included. The Spanish-language father/daughter dramedy earned $1.93 million on just 347 screens, setting it up for a $7-$8m four-day debut and a rock-solid per-screen average over/under $20,000-per. Note to studios: Hispanics go to the movies too. In holdover news, The Butler expanded by 220 screens and earned $3.6 million (-24% from last Friday) in 3,330 auditoriums. Its domestic cume is up to $62 million and it should flirt with $15 million for the four-day weekend and a $75-$80 million cume after eighteen days.
We’re The Millers held strong in its fourth weekend, earning another $3.1 million (-23% from last Friday) and crossing the $100 million mark. The Conjuring grossed $345,000 and should crack $1 million for the four-day weekend, with its current cume at $132 million. Pacific Rim is pretty much done domestically, but it may cross $100 million domestic and/or cross $400 million worldwide by the end of the weekend.
The Grandmaster expanded to 749 screens and earned another $740,000 for its troubles. The edited-for-American-consumption martial arts film has now earned $940,000 and will crack $1 million today. Elysium grossed $1.58m yesterday and now has $73.7m. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones grossed a poor $1.44m in its second Friday (-53% from last Friday) and now has $18.9m dume. The Smurfs 2 grossed $400,000 and now has $64.5m domestic while Grown Ups 2 snagged $180,000 for a $129.4m domestic cume
Forbes
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