Notable Openings This Weekend: Gravity, Runner Runner
It’s all about space this weekend. Gravity has been in production for a long time, and there’s certainly a lot of pure cinema fans looking forward to director Alfonso Cuaron’s (Children of Men) latest opus. But will the average Joe be plopping down his money to see this? I think so.
It’s hard to ignore Gravity’s Rotten Tomatoes score right now of 97%. I think the last couple years, Rotten Tomatoes has had an influence on people. If we look at Man of Steel this past summer, it certainly made a crap load of money it’s opening weekend (around $117 Million), but it really should have done even better. I think the low Tomatoes score influenced that film’s box office significantly. While not a sequel/franchise film, Gravity’s glowing buzz is going to make for a nice chunk of change this weekend.
The other big movie is the Ben Affleck/Justin Timberlake online poker caper Runner, Runner. Affleck and Timberlake are stars, but this movie has clearly been swept under the rug. This feels like a movie Affleck agreed to do six years ago when his career was still struggling. The Affleck fascination right now will bring in a little business, but Runner Runner will be forgotten about pretty quickly.
How Will It All Break Down…
Gravity cleans up, although I think it barely misses $40 Million.
TOP 5 BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS
1. Gravity – $39.5 Million
2. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 – $19 Million
3. Runner Runner – $11 Million
4. Prisoners – $7.5 Million
5. Rush – $7 Million
