Notable Openings This Weekend: Big Hero 6, Interstellar
This could be a bad weekend for people like me. Nolanites. As they say in Star Wars, “I have a bad feeling about this.” It’s not that I don’t think Interstellar is going to have a big weekend, but it may not finish #1. I have nothing against Big Hero 6, in fact I really haven’t given it much thought. I’m sure it’s fine. This is more about all the Nolan haters and critics who will relish at the idea of Nolan’s movie not finishing #1, and the inevitable headlines of “He’s lost it” and “Inter-flop.” It’s that threshold of reaching a certain level of success. Instead of appreciating greatness, we wait like wolves for a chink in the armor. But you don’t want to listen to me pontificate and philosophize like some pretentious ass hat at Starbucks. You want some Box Office Predictions!
Let’s start with Big Hero 6. When this trailer first hit, I thought it would be a moderate come and go success, but it’s been picking up a lot of steam the last couple months. It had that 100% Rotten Tomato ranking for a few days which people love to glom onto like bees on a caramel apple, so that certainly helps. It’s also the only kid option right now, which I always put a lot of stock in. This should do very well, and a lot better than I initially expected.
Interstellar is going to be just fine in terms of box office. It’s not going to flop, so let’s get that crap out of the way right now. The problem is if it doesn’t hit #1, it could potentially cause a lot of problems. If you asked me a few weeks ago, I would have pegged this film at possibly $70 million, but the critic rating is going to severely hurt it. The die-hard film fans will come out in droves, but there will be mainstream audience members who might get scared away by that current Rotten Tomato score:
“Oh, I thought this was supposed to be great, but it’s only just above 70%. Honey, let’s go bowling instead.”
You may get conversations like that. If it doesn’t hit #1, that also leaves the film with a stigma for the following weeks. The myths will grow about bad word of mouth because it didn’t even finish first on its opening weekend. With no staying power, it may also hurt Oscar chances in major awards, which seems extremely unlikely right now anyway. Any excuse for Academy members to ignore a Nolan film, they’ll take it. I’m still hopeful the awesome trailers and ridiculous cast are going to propel this film to prominence, but it needs to finish #1, and it needs good word of mouth, both of which are shaky right now.
HOW WILL IT ALL BREAK DOWN…
It’s going to be a battle, but I think the curiosity of Interstellar wins the day. It’s important to keep in mind that the film already opened in a lot of IMAX theaters on Wednesday, which will definitely hurt its weekend total.
TOP 5 BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS
1) Interstellar — $58.5 Million
2) Big Hero 6 — $56 Million
3) Nightcrawler — $6.5 Million
4) Ouija — $6 Million
5) Fury — $5 Million
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Daniel Cohen is the Film Editor for Pop-Break. Aside from reviews, Daniel does a weekly box office predictions column, and also contributes monthly Top Tens and Op-Ed’s on all things film. Daniel is a graduate of Bates College with a degree in English, and also studied Screenwriting at UCLA. He can also be read on www.movieshenanigans.com. His movie crush is Jessica Rabbit. Follow him on Twitter @dcohenwriter.
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