Friday Estimates: Openers Fall Well Short of Spectre and Peanuts

November 14, 2015

Spectre

Three new wide releases are all, as expected, struggling to make much headway against Spectre and The Peanuts Movie this weekend, with the two returning films sitting comfortably at the top of the chart. Spectre picked up an estimated $10.2 million on Friday for a total to date of $105.5 million, while Peanuts earned another $5.6 million, for $63.9 million so far.

Spectre continues to run somewhere between Quantum of Solace and Skyfall on our comp chart, but a final domestic total around $200 million looks a lot more likely than $300 million at this point, even with some expected help from Thanksgiving.

Comparisons for Peanuts are harder to judge at the moment, with Thanksgiving and Christmas both potentially being very lucrative for the film if it can stay in enough theaters for long enough. It’s down over 50% on its second Friday though, which doesn’t bode well. Today’s performance will be critical, and anything less than $10 million a big disappointment.

Among the wide releases, Love the Coopers is posting the best numbers, with $2.8 million on Friday and a weekend projected somewhere around $8 million. The seasonal family film doesn’t have a huge amount of competition right now, and should play well through Thanksgiving, so long as, like Peanuts, it manages to hold on in enough theaters.

The two other wide debutants are making much more disappointing starts. The 33 and My All-American share some of the same DNA, being dramatizations of inspirational real-life stories, and neither of them are connecting with audiences. The 33 earned $1.8 million on Friday, and will struggle to do much more than $5 million for the weekend. My All-American pulled in just $520,000 on Friday, and is projected to make $1.5 million by close of business on Sunday.

Four other films had notable Friday performances. Bollywood film, Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, which is being released by Fox International, landed in seventh place on Friday with $697,000 from just 286 theaters. Spotlight was in 12th on Friday with $391,000 from just 60 theaters, for the best theater average in the country. Brooklyn is also building on a promising start with $134,000 from 23 venues. Finally, Angelina Jolie-Pitt’s By the Sea started out with $38,000 from 10 theaters. While that’s not huge business, it’s also not the complete disaster that many our painting it: the film should still top a $10,000 average for the weekend. Clearly, it’s not going to have a great run though.

- Friday Box Office Chart
- Spectre comps
- James Bond franchise history
- Peanuts comps
- Love the Coopers comps
- The 33 comps
- Prem Ratan Dhan Payo comps
- My All-American comps

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Friday Estimates, My All-American, The Peanuts Movie, Spectre, Spotlight, By the Sea, Brooklyn, Love the Coopers, The 33, Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, James Bond, Angelina Jolie