Articles

May 18, 2014
 

EARLY WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: “Godzilla” Slightly Less Monstrous

 

GODZILLA (Warners/Legendary) is proving to be a somewhat frontloaded hit, with preliminary numbers at Deadline and elsewhere showing a Saturday drop of 15-20%, down from $38.5M on Friday to $32-32.5M.  If that holds, it will be a much heavier fall than the ones for Captain America: The Winter Soldier (down 6% to $34.7M) or The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (down 6% to $33.2M), and would probably mean a $90-92M weekend, below Captain America 2‘s $95M and possibly below Amazing 2‘s $91.6M.  That, of course, is still a gigantic amount of money, and much more than Godzilla was expected to earn as late as Thursday.  The only thing slightly worrisome about it is that with the new X-Men epic opening in just a few days, unenthusiastic word-of-mouth could catch up with Godzilla awfully fast.

The weekend’s other wide opening, MILLION DOLLAR ARM (Disney), stayed on its very mild path, still on target for $10.5M by Sunday.

 



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."