Weekend Estimates: Green Hornet Tops Sluggish Box Office

January 16, 2011

An estimated $34 million opening for The Green Hornet (a fractional improvement on the debut of The Book of Eli this time last year) wasn't enough to pull 2011 out of its early box office slump. Total box office for MLK weekend looks as though it will be down about 20-25%, or $40 million, from last year. Its no coincidence that Avatar grossed about $40 million in the same frame in 2010, which suggests that the industry will have a hard job closing the gap over the next couple of months.

Until the "Avatar Effect" wears off, there'll be a lot of pressure from prognosticators for movies to out-perform expectations, which means the $17.4 million estimated opening for The Dilemma is generating a lot of unfavorable headlines. It's certainly well below average for both Vince Vaughan and Kevin James, in spite of being reviewed no worse than most of their recent films. That lends credence to the theory that once people lose the habit of going to movie theaters, the second-string movies are harmed the worst.

Further down the chart (quite a bit further, in fact), The Heart Specialist struggled out the gate with an estimated $540,000 over its first three days. Poor weather in the south is partly to blame for the weak showing, but it'll need an MLK Day miracle to post good numbers.

The long weekend means that most studios will be reporting four-day estimates on Monday and final figures on Tuesday. As usual, we'll report everything we receive.

- 3-Day Weekend Estimates
- Daily estimates for Friday
- Daily estimates for Saturday
- Daily projections for Sunday

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, The Green Hornet, The Dilemma, The Heart Specialist