Friday Estimates: 38 Million Know Secrets while Mike and Dave go Stag
July 9, 2016
The Secret Life of Pets had an amazing Friday, earning $38.33 million. This is nowhere near Finding Dory’s $54.7 million opening day, but it’s still very impressive. Unfortunately, for The Secret Life of Pets, its internal multiple likely won’t be as large. Its reviews have settled at 76%, while it earned an A- from CinemaScore and both of these results are lower than Finding Dory earned. Then again, an A- CinemaScore is still a good result, especially since there have been only three films to earn an A from audiences so far this year. (Finding Dory is one of them, Captain America: Civil War and Me Before You were the other two.) I’m increasing our prediction from $72 million to $88 million, which does mean $300 million domestically is now a reasonable final target.
The other new release of the week is Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, which opened in second place with $6.65 million. Its reviews have also slipped and are now currently just 42% positive. Worse still, its CinemaScore is just a B. Anything below a B+ usually results in short legs. (Remember, CinemaScore interviews people as they leave Friday screenings, so they only talk to people who were interested enough to see the movie opening day.) It will earn $15 million over the weekend, which is almost identical to our prediction. If it can do as well internationally, it will break even sometime during the its home market run.
Finding Dory should earn second place with $20 million over the weekend after pulling in $6.28 million on Friday. More importantly, its running tally rose to $408 million yesterday, which puts it ahead of Captain America: Civil War and into first place on the 2016 domestic box office chart. I don’t think many people expected that. Furthermore, looking at the release schedule, there’s only one film that has a decent shot to top Finding Dory on the yearly chart, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. All three of these films are released by Disney, which is a certainty to be the number one studio this year.
The Legend of Tarzan earned fourth place on Friday $5.9 million, but will climb into third place over the weekend with $18 million. This is a decline of just over 50% from its opening weekend, but this is better than its weak reviews would indicate. I think this supports the hypothesis that families were the film’s primary audience.
- The Secret Life of Pets Comparisons
- Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates Comparisons
- Finding Dory Comparisons
Filed under: Friday Estimates, Finding Dory, The Secret Life of Pets, Captain America: Civil War, The Legend of Tarzan, Me Before You, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates