Weekend Estimates: One Direction Rounds Out Hollywood's Biggest Summer

September 1, 2013

Hollywood's Summer ends this weekend with a suitably back-to-school winner in the form of One Direction: This is Us. The 3D concert movie will pick up $17 million Friday-Sunday, largely on the back of an impressive $8.9 million gross on Saturday. While that won't set it up to challenge Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus among the top grossers in this particular sub-genre, it does show the solid business model for 3D films that cater to pop fans. Performances among other films playing this weekend were more varied.

The real standout success this weekend is Spanish-language comedy Instructions Not Included, which is set to earn $7.5 million Friday-Sunday from just 347 theaters. This is a triumph for Pantelion Films, which has steadily been establishing itself as the premier distributor for films catering to Hispanic audiences and now has a breakout hit to cement its reputation.

The weekend's other wide or wide-ish openers both flopped. Getaway will scrape together about $4.5 million from 2,130 theaters, while Closed Circuit is heading to around $2.5 million Friday-Sunday in 870 movie houses after opening tepidly on Wednesday.

This weekend's mixed bag of results is in keeping with the Summer season as a whole. We've seen a mix of true blockbusters such as Iron Man 3 and Despicable Me 2, relatively (but not completely) surprising hits like Fast and Furious 6, World War Z and The Heat, and duds: The Lone Ranger, After Earth, The Internship and R.I.P.D.. In the end, the shear quantity of films audiences have had to choose from is what took Summer, 2013 over the goal line and to a new record of $4.7 billion.

Afternoon Delight is the most impressive limited release this weekend with an expected $28,088 from two theaters. The sex comedy is getting a strong response from audiences after lukewarm reviews.

- Weekend Estimates

Bruce Nash

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, World War Z, R.I.P.D., Despicable Me 2, The Internship, The Heat, One Direction: This is Us, Closed Circuit, Getaway, Afternoon Delight, No se Aceptan Devoluciones