Friday Estimates: Sea Latest Disaster for WB
December 12, 2015
In the Heart of the Sea started out in first place on Friday, but won’t be on top for long. It earned just $3.85 million, putting it ahead of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, which earned $3.26 million. However, holdovers have a lot bigger gains on Saturday, while In the Heart of the Sea will likely fall and miss $10 million over the weekend. This is a disaster for a film that cost $100 million to make. This is bad news for Warner Bros., as it is not the first major flop they’ve had this year. Outside of American Sniper, which opened in 2014, they haven’t had a single monster hit (domestic box office of $200 million or more). On the other end, they’ve had three films with $100 million production budgets that flopped this year (Jupiter Ascending, Pan, and now In the Heart of the Sea). Worse still, they have one more $100 million movie coming out this year, Point Break, and it is widely expected to flop as well. For years, Warner Bros. was the biggest studio in the world, but after this year, there might need to be a major shake up to turn things around.
On a happier note, the rest of the top five are matching predictions nearly perfectly. Because they are all on track to come within a rounding error of predictions, there’s not much to say.
Meanwhile, The Big Short got off to a fast start with just over $220,000 in 8 theaters on Friday. If it keeps up this pace, it will have the second-best opening theater average for the year, behind Steve Jobs and ahead of Sicario. Let’s hope its wide release is closer to the latter than the former.
- Friday estimates
- In the Heart of the Sea comps
- The Big Short comps
Filed under: Friday Estimates, In the Heart of the Sea, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, Steve Jobs, The Big Short, Sicario