3rd UPDATE, Friday, 3:06 PM: Fox’s Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is continuing strong today and all bets are on a good Friday with a range of $24M-$27M right now (includes the $4.1M from late nights last night) for anywhere from $63M-$68M or higher for the three-day. At least that’s how it looks early in the first full day of its run. Paramount’s Transformers: Age Of Extinction, is, of course, in the No. 2 spot after its third week in release and is on the verge of crossing $200M. Following that, its going to be a logjam of Fox/DreamWorks Animation’s How To Train Your Dra gon 2, Melissa McCarthy’s comedy Tammy (in its second weekend of release), Sony’s summer splash 22 Jump Street and Relativity’s family hopeful Earth To Echo (also in its second weekend) all elbowing each other for a piece of the weekend box office pie. More to come later on. Happy Friday.
2nd UPDATE, Friday, 11:30 AM: Boyhood grosses for its sneaks last night are in and it is doing very well. With four theaters reporting (of its five) so far, its screen average is around $8,600, so wonderful news for this little picture which has garnered great reviews and has a 100% fresh from Rotten Tomatoes. The Richard Linklater coming-of-age pic is a critical favorite across the country. IFC Films, a division of AMC Networks, bankrolled this film for 12 years and is distributing. This was a picture that began production before the social media boon, but its official trailers are getting heavy shares and its international trailer (as it opened overseas already) has been viewed 3.2M times, which is impressive for a little art house film. Kudos to producers Linklater and other nervous parents John Sloss, Cathleen Sutherland and Jonathan Sehring on this one as well as the cast, made up of Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke and Lorelei Linklater.
Related: ‘Boyhood’: 39 Shooting Days, A 4,200-Day Production Schedule
Meanwhile, Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes is tracking to making $26M-$28M Friday (including its $4.1M so far from late nights last night starting at 10 PM — see below), so it could make $67M-$72M this weekend. It also has, by far, the most social engagement of any movie right now (as to be expected), but the big story is how Fox has fed over 100 international trailer versions across YouTube produced by language, subtitles, driving views in all regions, RelishMix reports. “Fans are engaging with a storm of behind-the-scenes selfies, groupies, talk show clips and countdown promotions that are being shared primarily on Facebook,” said RelishMix CEO Marc Karze n. The ApesMovies Facebook page has in fact hit 2M likes after having a nice push of 116K after the global premiere in San Francisco. And who is the social media king on this film? Andy Serkis who plays Caesar. Love the teaser one sheet that featured Caesar, too. Like I said, Fox is doing a wonderful job marketing this picture. Kudos must go, too, to the Fox production team — this had to be an incredible undertaking with not only the production but also overseeing the CGI effects (which are about the best I’ve ever seen) — so to director Matt Reeves and his entire crew, and Fox’s Jim Gianopulos, Emma Watts and Mark Roybal: nicely done. Chernin Entertainment, which produced the first installment, also helped produce this one.
NOTEWORTHY: Lionsgate’s Divergent just finishing up its domestic run ended up taking in $150.09M domestically and $118M internationally for a total worldwide of $269.2M to date. Godzilla looks right now to be the first film in history to open to over $90M and not hit $200M. As of its last reporting, it had $198M on 352 screens. Its worldwide gross is $498.5M.
UPDATE, FRIDAY, 7:20 AM: Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes took in $4.1M in late nights starting at 10 PM in about 2,750 theaters last night. In comparison, X-Men: Days Of Future Past opened at 10 PM in 2,904 locales and brought in $8.1M and ended up with a three-day gross of $90.8M. World War Z opened at 8 PM on 3,607 screens to take in $3.6M and went on to gross a three-day of $66.4M. So Apes is off to a fairly decent start for the weekend so far. Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes swung in with a three-day take of $54.8M and Fox is saying that Dawn may open similarly but it looks to go higher as interest among the male demo ages 20 to 55 is as high as you can get. Thanks to the quality of the first film, the anticipation for this film is incredibly strong.
PREVIOUSLY, Thursday, 10:55 AM: This weekend, the industry has cleared the way for Fox’s Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, which is opening tonight at 10 pm in late night screenings on about 2,700 screens with all its 3-D glamour before it hits 3,996 this weekend. Of that number, 350 to 360 are large formats. This is a quality pic, not as good as the first one, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (also produced by Chernin Entertainment), but it delivers to its target demo. And it’s grabbing the interest of both old and new audiences. (Old as in my age who remember the first round, starring Charlton ‘out-of-my-cold-dead-hands’ Heston) … so, 20-somethings and older. The first installment opene d to $54.8M at the beginning of August of 2011 and went onto gross $481.8M worldwide with $176.7M (or only roughly 37%) coming from domestic audiences. Fox is expecting a similar opening but it could go higher — much higher — and I believe it will given that the interest is much higher than the first, tracking as high as you can get with males 20 through 55.
So Apes takes the No. 1 spot, followed by Transformers: Age Of Extinction which will cross $200M in its third week of release (with $18.4M through last night). After that, it’ll be the same ol, same ol. How much will Tammy fall?
Right now, Apes represents more than 70% of Fandango‘s weekend ticket sales and the company said it’s outselling the first installment at the same point in the sales cycle. They have it pacing similar to ticket sales for World War Z, which opened to $66.4M last summer. This one was launched with a fantastic marketing campaign starting with that arresting one-sheet teaser of Caesar.
I rarely mention a limited release in my weekend box office preview, but IFC Films’ Boyhood from filmmaker Richard Linklater is opening this weekend in five theaters. This coming-of-age story is one of the best pictures we have seen in a long time here at Deadline — and it’s gotten 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Though it is long, it never feels lengthy. It is also playing quite well on social media for an art house film (see how well here). Oscar worthy.
The budget for this one (which shot for 12 years at a budget of about $200,000 each time) is around $2.4M. Word-of-mouth should be strong. So I will be watching this one’s per-screen averages this weekend as well. The film stars Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke and Linklater’s daughter Lorelei. It opens tomorrow.
Also, going wider in its expansion is TWC’s Begin Again, starring Mark Ruffalo and Kiera Knightly, which is getting fantastic word of mouth.
For more estimates listed by title, see box office results here...
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