Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I hopelessly predict the upcoming weekend’s box office grosses. We’ve been apart for too long — because of the fact that last week’s major releases (“The Amazing Spider-Man” and “Katy Perry: Part of Me”) opened prior to Friday, I figured that you could extrapolate your own weekend predictions from their respective opening day grosses and I could seize the opportunity for a break. If you were jonesing for my insight on the fiscal prospects of Oliver Stone’s “Savages,” I sincerely apologize. But I’m back and ready to crunch numbers for this weekend’s sole opener, “Ice Age: Continental Drift.”
Despite stellar numbers overseas, the “Ice Age” franchise has not experienced tremendous growth stateside with each new entry. The first installment grossed $176.4m total, and then the sequel and the three-quel pulled in $196.6m and $195.3m, respectively, with the latter benefitting from 3-D inflated ticket prices. Thus, it’s safe to assume that this one will, like its predecessors, fail to reach $200m. The more important question: Will it decline? My instinct is: not when all is said and done, but the film’s first weekend may be somewhat tepid because parents realize they have a long time to see it before another kiddie flick comes out (“Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days” on August 3).
So, let’s find some comparisons of recent high-grossing animated films that had great box office runs, but didn’t gross a huge percentage of their total on opening weekend… Three good ones would be “Despicable Me,” “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax,” and “Kung Fu Panda 2,” which grossed 22.4 percent, 32.9 percent, and 28.8 percent of their total grosses on opening weekend, respectively. That averages to 28.0 percent. Assuming that “Ice Age: Continental Drift” achieves the same total box office as its direct predecessor ($195.3m), that means that its opening should be $54.7 million.
My prediction of what the full top 10 will look like:
- “Ice Age: Continental Drift” … $54.7m
- “The Amazing Spider-Man” … $31.0m -50.0%
- “Ted” … $19.3m -40.1%
- “Brave” … $12.7m -35.2%
- “Savages” … $8.0m -50.0%
- “Magic Mike” … $7.0m -55.2%
- “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” … $4.9m -34.8%
- “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection” … $4.7m -53.5%
- “Moonrise Kingdom” … $3.4m -24.8%
- “Katy Perry: Part of Me” … $2.9m -59.4%