After the first year-to-year decline from 2011, the box office is looking to do more than make up for that with another surging weekend...
Audiences craved The Hunger Games, and it resulted the biggest non-sequel opening day ever. The book adaptation earned an incredibly strong estimated $68.3 million on Friday, nearly beating out The Lorax's opening weekend in just a day and includes the $19.7 million the film earned during midnight showings. If you count in sequels, the film would rank fifth on the all-time list, behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II ($91.1 million) and three of the four Twilight films (New Moon ($72 million), Breaking Dawn: Part I ($70.5 million) and Eclipse ($68.5 million)). Critics gave it positive reviews (85% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences loved what they saw ("A" CinemaScore), but the weekend will still be front-loaded since fans rushed out to see it on Friday. Right now, its' hard to predict, but I'm going to guess that the film will gross in line with Twilight - Breaking Dawn Part I, with an opening of $138-$140 million. Still though, this is the years' first live-action blockbuster (The Lorax's projected $215 million finish still technically qualifies it as a blockbuster).
As for holdovers, there really wasn't much news about them. 21 Jump Street and Dr. Suess' The Lorax both dipped 53% from last Friday, with the action comedy earning an estimated $6.25 and the animated hit earned an estimated $3.2 million. Based on recent trajectories, they are headed for $20 million and $14 million weekends. John Carter continued to limp, down 66% to an estimated $1.4 million, in what should be just $5.5 million for its' third weekend. In just 390 theaters, the Christian drama October Baby debuted in sixth place (behind Project X) on Friday with an estimated $605,000, in what should be a weekend close to $2 million.
Weekend estimates to be posted tomorrow afternoon...
