Friday Estimates: New Releases Receive a Cold Welcome
February 9, 2019
Friday’s box office can best be described as “What happened?” Thursday previews looked promising, but then the Friday numbers arrived and it looks like most of the new releases will miss expectations. This includes The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, which opened with $8.5 million on Friday, $9.1 million including its paid previews from January. This is well below expectations and puts the film on pace for about $32 million over the weekend. Its reviews are 85% positive, but its early CinemaScore is just A minus, which isn’t particularly good for a family film. Next weekend is a long weekend, so I think it will still get to $100 million domestically, which is more than it cost to make. However, a lot of people thought it had a real shot at $200 million domestically, so this is a real disappointment.
What Men Want had better than expected previews, but only managed $6.6 million on Friday as a whole. Its reviews remain just below 50% positive, while CinemaScore now releases its ratings on Monday, unless the studio opts to release them early, so it will take a couple of days before we see what the audience reactions were like. Even if the film is a real crowd pleaser, it will have trouble getting to $20 million over the full weekend and between $18 million and $19 million seems more likely.
Cold Pursuit was the only new release to match expectations, more or less, with $3.64 million putting it on pace for between $10 million and $11 million. Its reviews are better than this result, but I don’t know if the Liam Neeson controversy is the problem here, or if there have been too many similar movies made over the years and audience have moved on.
The Prodigy opened in fourth place on Friday with $2.2 million, but it won’t stay there for long. It will likely finish with between $5 million and $6 million over the weekend and both The Upside ($1.78 million on Friday) and Glass ($1.57 million on Friday) are expected to overtake it.
- The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part Comparisons
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- What Men Want Comparisons
- Cold Pursuit Comparisons
- The Prodigy Comparisons
Filed under: Friday Estimates, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, Glass, The Upside, What Men Want, The Prodigy, Cold Pursuit, Liam Neeson