If preliminary numbers at Deadline hold, GRAVITY (Warners) will own the new record for all-time best October opening. It had a superb $23.5M Saturday, up 35% from its $17.5M opening day, for what should be a $55M+ weekend. That would handily break the current October record of $52.6M for Paranormal Activity 3. More importantly, that 35% Saturday increase means the kind of excellent word of mouth that should translate into a run deep into the fall, and a title that will still be in voters’ minds come awards season. (By way of comparison, when Pacific Rim opened to $14.6M in July, it went down 12% on its second day of release.)
No such good news for RUNNER RUNNER (20th), which remained a bust with $3.1M on Saturday after a $2.8M Friday.
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 (Sony) is currently claiming a 100% Saturday increase to $9.4M, the same Saturday bump as the original Cloudy even though its Friday had taken a much steeper fall from the previous week. We’ll see what happens to that number. RUSH (Universal) reportedly took a 55% dive from its first wide weekend to $4.5M, a worse hit than either BAGGAGE CLAIM (Fox Searchlight), down 50%, or DON JON (Relativity), down 49%.
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About the Author
Mitch Salem
MITCH SALEM has worked on the business side of the entertainment industry for 20 years, as a senior business affairs executive and attorney for such companies as NBC, ABC, USA, Syfy, Bravo, and BermanBraun Productions, and before that, at the NY law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges. During all that, he has more or less constantly been going to the movies and watching TV, and writing about both since the 1980s. His film reviews also currently appear on screened.com and the-burg.com. In addition, he is co-writer of an episode of the television series "Felicity."
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