Notable Openings This Weekend: Ender’s Game, Free Birds, Last Vegas
I thought we were supposed to be in Oscar season? Ender’s Game. Free Birds. Last Vegas. Really? This is what we got? I guess we’re still in that period of Oscar movies opening randomly in ten theatres, but will continue to expand ever so slowly as the year goes on. But enough tangents – let’s break down a real snoozer of a weekend.
The word of the day is “mediocre.” All three new releases should have “whatever” opening weekends. They won’t be bad. They won’t be good. They’ll just be there. We’ll start with Ender’s Game, a popular sci-fi book from the eighties. Some studio executive foolishly thinks Harrison Ford is still a huge box office draw. The film will open #1, but will come and go.
Kid movies have been hard to predict this year. Free Birds seems to be opening at a good time, with the only other kid movie in theaters being Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, which everyone has already seen. But seriously, has there been marketing for this film? I honestly thought this was a straight to video movie less than two days ago. I’m not kidding. Again…Free Birds will do “whatever” business.
Then we have Last Vegas. *siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh* The only people interested in seeing this are senior citizens, and they don’t go to movies. Otherwise, nobody cares about Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, and Kevin Kline being in a movie together. I don’t mean to be vindictive towards those guys, they are living legends, but this is just a round about way of me saying this movie looks painful, and will disappoint at the box office.
How Will It All Break Down…
Boring opening numbers for the newbies, and hopefully this is the last time we have to talk about Gravity being in the top five.
TOP 5 BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS
1) Ender’s Game — $23.5 Million
2) Free Birds — $19 Million
3) Bad Grandpa — $16.5 Million
4) Last Vegas — $13.5 Million
5) Gravity — $11.5 Million
