Weekend Estimates: Twilight Tops Over Thanksgiving
November 27, 2011
In spite of a hefty 70% weekend-to-weekend decline, Breaking Dawn, Part 1 will run out an easy winner at the box office over Thanksgiving, according to studio estimates released on Sunday. Its $42 million Friday-Sunday performance is exactly in line with the $42 million earned by New Moon during its Thanksgiving weekend, but it is currently running about $9 million behind the second film in the franchise, suggesting a total gross of around $285 million. A bevy of family-friendly new releases will be unable to come all that close to the vampire film, although all studios involved are projecting strong business for the films in question throughout the Holiday Season.
The Muppets will post a respectable $42 million over five days and $29.5 million over the weekend, for second place. Hugo is perhaps more impressive, scoring a projected $11.35 million Friday-Sunday in just 1,277 venues. Arthur Christmas finds itself on shakier ground with a $12.7 million Friday-Sunday debut, although it will obviously be looking forward to drawing younger viewers as Christmas draws nearer.
In limited release, The Artist is projected to open with a very impressive $210,000 in just four theaters and A Dangerous Method will be close behind on the Per Theater Chart with around $182,000 in the same number of locations. Given that it's playing in 433 movie houses, the $7.2 million projected weekend for The Descendants is equally strong.
A little more disappointing is the $1.77 million projected opening for My Week with Marilyn at 244 theaters. An average of $7,266 per theater clearly supports some expansion, but art house owners will have a lot of films to choose from over the next few weeks.
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Arthur Christmas, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1, The Descendants, My Week with Marilyn, The Muppets, A Dangerous Method, The Artist