Trickling in...

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG: $31.15M Friday (est) / $31.15M Domestic Total / 3,903 Locations / $7,980 Location Avg.
A MADEA CHRISTMAS: $5.74M Friday (est) / $5.74M Domestic Total / 2,194 Locations / $2,616 Location Avg.
THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE: $4.1M Friday (est) / $347.93M Domestic Total / 3,563 Locations / $1,151 Location Avg.



AMERICAN HUSTLE: $210,909 Friday (est) $210,909 Domestic Total / 6 Locations / $35,152 Location Avg.

A Madea Christmas' number is fascinating. Around half of the opening day of Madea's Witness Protection last year. Less than Diary of a Black Woman's first day in 1,483 theatres in February 2005.

Some more numbers from BOM.

Honestly, I think that's solid for The Hobbit. Just like Catching Fire it's on the very high end of early guesstimates, meaning it's probably more backloaded than expected. I think the weekend should break $70 million, and I don't think legs should be much different than the first - maybe a little weaker, but I doubt WB is weeping about making an extra $1 billion from stretching this out to three films.

Not as awful as early numbers, but that's still shockingly weak for a holiday-themed Madea movie. Maybe it'll have some stronger than usual legs leading up to Christmas, but still, I thought it would be a much stronger breakout.

Heavy drop for Catching Fire, but still decent. It should hold onto theaters over the holidays which will help legs a lot. Great hold for Frozen.

Amazing PTA for American Hustle, notsomuch for Saving Mr. Banks, though the awards success for the former and disappointment for the latter is probably the result of that. I'm not quite sure yet how they'll do next weekend.

Also, 10% drop for Philomena!! Those Golden Globe nominations probably helped, but it's doing really well right now.

I said it before, I'll say it again. No more of this "early Friday numbers" shit, please. They're either way too low, triggering shock and hand-wringing until they are revised up, or they're way too high, triggering shock and hand-wringing once they're revised down.

There really needs to be an embargo on "early Friday" reporting. Can't BO, Deadline, etc. be patient enough to wait for official estimates?

You don't like drama, right?

I don't like unnecessary drama of the kind we've been getting recently, which involves people freaking out over inaccurate early Friday reporting.

The early Friday numbers added so much drama to CF, Im3 and TA opening weekend..

I still remember the 58 million Friday for Im3 lol


CF is holding okay but seems like 410 million is the goal now.

I like early numbers - but I don't like when people pronounce "it's a lock" or start WWW threads based on early numbers (even Friday numbers are not enough to do so)...

I think you put it better than I did. I just have a tendency to overreact when people freak out about early Friday numbers that get revised up.

Catching Fire was the absolute peak of this madness.

Fricking awesome start for American Hustle. That's way above what The Fighter did in 4 theaters around this same time of year. Bodes well. Solid for Saving Mr. Banks too.

Frozen and Philomena held extremely well. Expected for The Hobbit. I dunno what to even say about Madea; these numbers are inexplicable.

It's worth noting that it appears ILD didn't actually expand outside of NY or LA this weekend despite adding 11 theaters. Kind of a dumb move on CBS's part. Next weekend will be more telling of its prospects.

This is why early numbers are useless to begin with. Anyways, better results for DOS and MC, but still not very good for MC.

It could play better than expected over the holidays since there is nothing that appeals as strongly to urban audiences, but I'm not expecting any more than $40-$50M total and that might end up being a bit too generous.

Re: Madea, I'm not buying this idea of "the black demographic is tapped out because The Best Man Holiday did well last month," any more than I bought the idea that "Madea Christmas will automatically do well because black people will automatically flock to anything with Madea in it."

Now, I may be white, but I know for a fact that black moviegoers are not robots, nor do they have a hive mind. I'm sure that black moviegoers aren't thinking "Well, TBMH filled my one-black-movie-per-season quota, I guess I'm not going to see MC" any more than "Well, it's a Tyler Perry movie, and I'm black, so I guess I'm automatically going to see MC." Not only do they see many of the same movies as other Americans, but they also make decisions based on whether they think a movie, "urban" or not, is going to be any good.

Perhaps the people who went out to see all the previous Madea movies are waiting until it's closer to Christmas, or maybe they could be starting to get tired of Madea (in the same way white audiences have been getting tired of, say, Vince Vaughn), but I think we should also ponder whether a bunch of people made a bunch of individual decisions to the effect of "this individual movie just doesn't look very good to me, so I'm not interested in seeing it."

What a fucking racist post.

You really thought that? My point was that it's almost a little kinda "racist" to think that TBMH somehow exhausted black demand for black movies for the entire holiday season.

Every moviegoer makes individual decisions, white or black or purple or plaid. If MC underperforms, it's because the people who would have seen it decided not to. That was my point in a nutshell.

I only threw out the "tired of Madea" thing as a speculation - the Vince Vaughn comparison was intended as a joke.

You are clearly trying, struggling, to convince yourself black people are capable of sentient thought. Deeply troubling.

There are still theatres in America playing We're the Millers. What a monster.

I thought Millers closed last Thursday? That's what BOM says, so I assume that's WB's official close date?

For that matter, what the hell is a close date? Do all theaters actually pull the movie after that date, or is that just when the studio officially stops tracking a film's gross?

(And does this mean that Algren is right when he insists that The Expendables stayed in theaters longer and made more money than the official gross?)

With 31, the Hobbit should do at least 70 million. It could do more depending on how well it did today. I know the theater I was at today was pretty packed.

I think The Hobbit will hit $70 million.

But opening to less than Return of the King's three-day weekend despite:

1. 3D
2. inflaiton
3. the fact that ROTK had a 5-day weekend with a lot of demand burned by Friday

makes this opening not too good. LOTR/Middle Earth will always be good for a big hit, but it is crazy how much of a non-event The Hobbit has generally become. Though The Hobbit 2 will obviously gross more doemstically, it seems like the domestic hype for it is not really much bigger than say, for Thor: The Dark World...

Basically like your average Harry Potter film except for the first and the last then.

I see Hobbit 2 doing:

Saturday: $26M (-16.5%)
Sunday: $18.7M (-28.1%)

Weekend: $75.9M