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Despite all Universal‘s efforts to imprint audiences with the idea that THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT is some kind of quasi-sequel to Bridesmaids (it’s not), preliminary numbers at Deadline show the movie to be underperforming badly. Its $3.7M Friday was only in 3rd place for the day, well below the $6M opening day the same creative team’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall earned on its opening day in 2008. Sarah ended up with a $17.7M weekend, while based on these numbers, Engagement will likely be more like a tepid $11M. That would put it neck-and-neck among the weekend’s openings with THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS (Sony), which had a $2.8M Friday but should have a much bigger Saturday due to family matinee audiences, and also get to just about an $11M weekend. SAFE (Lionsgate/Summit) and THE RAVEN (Relativity) had similar Fridays to Pirates, but won’t have its Saturday bump, and are likely headed to forgettable $7M weekends.
With such weak openings as competition, THINK LIKE A MAN (Screen Gems/Sony) looks like it will easily take a 2d consecutive weekend, with a $5.2M Friday that should mean $15-16M for the weekend. That would be a decline of a little over 50%, pretty good for what Hollywood likes to call the “urban” genre (Tyler Perry’s movies tend to take around a 60% hit in their 2d weekends). THE LUCKY ONE (Warners) should go down by a similar percentage to $11-12M for the weekend, but that’s less good for a soap (The Vow and Dear John both had less than 50% declines in Weekend 2). CHIMPANZEE (Disney) should go down about 50% to $5M or so, a better hold than the 58-60% drops for African Cats and Oceans.
Meanwhile, THE HUNGER GAMES (Lionsgate/Summit) keeps chugging along, down only about 25% from the previous Friday for what should be around a $11M 6th weekend, which should guarantee it to outgross the final Harry Potter (barring a complete collapse next weekend when The Avengers arrives).
Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY all weekend for updated boxoffice and analysis!
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