Mr. Cinema

Per Deadline:

Both Warner Bros' Green Lantern ($22M Friday, $60M weekend) and Fox's Mr. Popper's Penguins ($7M Friday, $19M weekend) look on target right now. But these numbers also mean falling stars in Hollywood. The superhero pic had well-known actor Ryan Reynolds in it, yet looks like it can't better Thor's recent $65.7M opening weekend starring a complete unknown. And Mr. Popper's result shows that Jim Carrey's popularity keeps waning in live action movies: his last pair were Fun With Dick And Jane (2005) opening to $14.6M, and The Number 23 (2007) debuted to $14.3M and Yes Man (2008) which first released to $18.2M. (I'm not counting I Love You, Phillip Morris because it never received wide distribution.) That this latest is grossing at all is due to the penguins, I'm certain. The total moviegoing weekend ends up an estimated -17% from last year (when Toy Story 3 opened to $110.3M. The big qualifier for all the above is the Sunday drop for Father's Day.

Full analysis below. Refined numbers in the morning. Here's the Top 10:

1. Green Lantern (Warner Bros) NEW [3,816 Runs]
Friday $22M, Estimated Weekend $60M

2. Mr. Popper's Penguins (Fox) NEW [3,338 Runs]
Friday $7M, Estimated Weekend $19M

3. Super 8 (Paramount Week 2 [3,408 Runs]
Friday $5.8M (-52%), Estimated Weekend $19.5M, Estimated Cume $71.5M

4. X-Men: First Class (Fox) Week 3 [3,375 Runs]
Friday $3.3M, Estimated Weekend $11.5M, Estimated Cume $129M

5. The Hangover Part II (Legendary/Warner Bros) Week 4 [3,460 Runs]
Friday $3M, Estimated Weekend $10M, Estimated Cume $233M

6. Kung Fu Panda 2 (Paramount) Week 4 [3,469 Runs]
Friday $2.5M, Estimated Weekend $8.2M, Estimated Cume $143M

7. Bridesmaids (Universal) Week 5 [2,573 Runs]
Friday $2.4M, Estimated Weekend $7.2M, Estimated Cume $136M

8. Pirates Of The Caribbean 4 (Disney) Week 5 [2,742 Runs]
Friday $2.2M, Estimated Weekend $8.2M, Estimated Cume $222M

9. Midnight In Paris (Sony Classics) Week 5 [1,083 Runs]
Friday $1.4M, Estimated Weekend $5M, Estimated Cume $21.5M

10. Judy Moody (Relativity) Week 2 [2,524 Runs]
Friday $825K (-63%), Estimated Weekend $2.5M, Estimated Cume $11.4M

The X-Men number is wrong and is probably supposed to be $119 million after the weekend.

Deftones

I thought that Bad Teacher movie was out this weekend, too.

Edit: Just looked. It's next weekend.

Shannon Nutt

I really don't care how much Green Lantern makes - but it bothers me when people swamp to movies like this (and the dreadful - possibly worse than this movie - POTC 4), and something really well-made like SUPER 8 only does moderately good business.

I guess I'm finally old - because they're not making movies that I find appealing in the least anymore!

islandclaws

Considering the schizo marketing, B-list actor/A-list abs, and everything else, I'd say $60m is a good start. But I think it'll sink like a goddamn stone.

PopcornTreeCt

If Super 8 spent a gazillion dollars on advertising then I'm sure more people would've flocked to see it. And as for POTC 4, any Johnny Depp starring Pirates movie is like printing money.

Supermallet

Fixed.

islandclaws

It was right the first time. Now, go curl up under a pile of your Tin Tin posters.

Supermallet

Your words, they wound me! Oh, I am betrayed!

Boba Fett

Supermallet

Mr. Cinema

Weekend #2 will tell us how good or awful WOM is for Green Lantern. Ang Lee's Hulk dropped a whopping 69.7% during its 2nd weekend and Fantastic Four dropped 59.4% and the sequel dropped 65.5%. I'm guessing GL will fall in this range which means it'll probably end up with maybe $130-$140 million at best.

Transformers, Harry Potter, and Captain America are probably going to ensure it has short legs. Of course, WB could get lucky and the film turns out to be a big family friendly hit. But I think the odds are against that.

This will probably need to be big overseas. But is Ryan Reynolds a draw internationally? Is Green Lantern?

RoboDad

Sorry, but your problem has nothing to do with age. I've got 13 years on you, and I found both Super 8 AND POTC: On Stranger Tides to be very entertaining.

I had hoped that good WOM would help Super 8, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Maybe if they had cleaned up the coarse language a bit, and toned down the "violence" of the action scenes, it would have had broader family appeal. I don't know.

Paul_SD

Comparisons to Goonies and the schmaltzier aspects of Spielbergs oeuvre- as if those things were positives- make me want to steer as far away from this as possible.

fitprod

Yeah the tweaking of certain threatening elements really worked for ET...

I noted it in last weeks box office thread, taste change, and this type of film making doesn't draw anymore.

fitprod

RoboDad

Roll your eyes at someone else. It doesn't impress me at all.

As for your comment, I assume you are implying that I was suggesting some kind of revisionist editing to the finished product, as Spielberg did to the then-15-year-old E.T. film (since that is the only possible way your comment makes any sense). Please reread my comment, and you will note that no such suggestion was made.

My comment referred to the intensity of some of the action sequences (loud explosions, large objects crashing all around the characters, jump scenes during chase sequences, etc). I suspect that many parents with young children would avoid taking those children to see films with such scenes. I doubt many of those same parents would object quite as strongly to government agents bearing arms.

Rypro 525

19.5 mil for Super 8 second weekend doesn't seem too too bad. per bom, it made 35 last week, and it might beat Mr Poppers. And per BOM, the budget was only 50 (plus a fuckton of advertising obviously)

Labor

Holy shit, GLs utterly rotten word of mouth is spreading so fast its Saturday apparently dropped to a whopping 17 mil, and may now barely go over a 50 mil OW

Matthew Chmiel

$22 million Friday - $3 million midnight = $19 million (technically for) Friday.

When you discount midnight showings, it's not a significant drop for a film that would be front loaded.

Warner was estimating the film to do $50 million. Of course, they wanted more, but they'll take it. However, Warner has nobody to blame but themselves for this disaster. With a better writer and director at helm, Green Lantern might've done better. However, expect a 60-70% drop next weekend due to poor WOM and the opening of Cars 2.

Mr. Cinema

And a reboot in 5 years starring Bradley Cooper and being directed by Louis Leterrier.

wm lopez

Glad to see Jim Carey's movie bomb maybe now he'll do a ACE VENTURA movie.

Jackskeleton

I'm not sure I get the logic for this.. regardless if it was midnight or not, that's the front loaded amount for GL for Friday. You can't really say "Well, the 3 million was technically Thursday's take in" because that 3 million would have seen it that Friday if there was no midnight screenings.

So you can very much point out that GL didn't get any love from matinee film goers and bad word of mouth did spread for the film.

When the film can't even meet the studio's lowered expectations for North America, it's a sad thing. What's worse is that WB will see this not as "Well, we shouldn't have fucked around with the script so much.. and cast a shitty directory with a meh script", but will see it as proof that superheroes beside Batman and Superman can't carry their own film and don't deserve one.

Super X

Warner was so desperate to get themselves another superhero franchise that they didn't trust one writer to get it done and kept having different writers have go after go on the script. They also immediately went for an ambitious CGI-laden story which they clearly weren't properly prepared to do, thus the mad rush to complete the effects in time or the set release date. When things started going wrong, they were so invested in this potential franchise that they just kept throwing more money at the thing without addressing the underlying problems. In the end, it resulted in a film with good visuals but shoddy editing and a story that had too many cooks, resulting in a film that couldn't be any better than average.

Chances of a sequel are next to none after this poor opening. If they do decide to do another, it'll likely be aftre a break to allow people to forget about this one and will probably be a hard reboot, much like "Incredible Hulk".

Falc04

Yup, thought the same exact thing, as I was watching it with my 14yr daughter yesterday. Very good film, but unfortunately everytime the chubby kid opened his potty mouth, the movie sank a notch. Like you, I think this would have been a much bigger hit, if it was PG, instead of PG-13.

Matthew Chmiel

When people start to mention that it had a 22% drop from Friday to Saturday, that isn't technically true due to all the late-Thursday night showings.

Any film that has a large midnight opening will have a drop on Saturday. It's unavoidable. For example: The Dark Knight had a 30% drop from its opening Friday to Saturday. Was that a box office disappointment? No.

Analysts are trying to spin that Green Lantern is a disaster, but looking at past blockbusters and their Friday to Saturday drops, 22% isn't that bad.

Artman

The thing is, with midnight showings it always ups the % drop for next friday, and than everyone starts saying how bad it is... than of course it averages out for the wknd.

I don't think studios will be so quick to throw 200million at an unproven comic book character anymore. For some reason GL just didn't look how I expected it to, I like all the actors, sci-fi storyline, but that first trailer really did prove to be an insurmountable mistake.