Bold Box Office Predictions – Valentine’s Day Weekend
Notable Openings This Weekend: Fifty Shades of Grey, Kingsman: The Secret Service
YES!!!! IT’S HERE!! FIFTY SHADES, BABY! YES! WOO-HOOO! O…M…F…G! GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE? IT COULD BE! Alright, enough of that crap. Yeah, Fifty Shades of Grey opens this weekend. Let’s just get through this. First of all, a mea culpa on last weekend. Yeah, I under predicted SpongeBob by over $30 Million. Oops. This comes from a place of never having seen a single SpongeBob episode. I didn’t realize how much of a cultural impact that little yellow rectangle had. Moving on though, there’s no getting around it – Fifty Shades of Grey is going to destroy the box office. We also have the counter-programming of a Matthew Vaughn geek project, so there’s a lot going on. Let’s predict.
There really isn’t a whole lot to analyze with Fifty Shades of Grey. The book has sold an absurd amount, a lot of women are obsessed with it, the trailer downloads have been ridiculous, and guys can hem and haw all they want and proclaim how stupid it looks, but a lot of them are going to see the train wreck for themselves. We’re going to wake up Monday morning and read several articles about the downfall of cinema, humanity, etc. What it all comes down to though is that Fifty Shades of Grey is going to make Fifty Shades of Holy Crap, That’s A Shit Load of Money. It is what it is.
Even though Fifty Shades of Grey is going to have a monster weekend, this is the right time to release the geekiest of films. Kingsman has a lot of hype and good buzz, but I’ve seen too many Scott Pilgrims and Kick-Asses to know this is playing to a niche crowd. It’s not going to make the box office you think it is. Despite all that, the film has been marketed pretty well, and I do expect it to perform better than the average cult film.
HOW WILL IT ALL BREAK DOWN…
I wouldn’t be completely shocked if Fifty Shades of Grey opened close to $150 Million. I really wouldn’t. I won’t go that far, but I do think it’s going to over perform. Like I said – let’s just get through this.
- Fifty Shades of Grey — $108 Million
- The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water — $29.5 Million
- Kingsman: The Secret Service — $24 Million
- American Sniper — $16.5 Million
- Jupiter Ascending — $9 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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