Bold Box Office Predictions: June 19-21, 2015
Notable Openings This Weekend: Inside Out
Wow. So I predicted Jurassic World would make $100 Million last weekend. That was an incorrect prediction. In case you haven’t heard, those damn dinosaurs made Jurassic World the highest grossing weekend in the history of cinema, knocking 2012’s Marvel’s The Avengers to #2. To be fair, NOBODY on planet Earth had that prediction. What the hell happened? I know Jurassic Park is a big franchise, but the last movie came out in 2001 and made a whopping near $51 Million. Not only that, Jurassic World was coming off two horribly received sequels. I don’t get it? Were the trailers that good? I can assure you that many suits in Hollywood are looking at printed out graphs and Microsoft Excel spread sheets sprawled across the conference table trying to figure it out. Good luck. I thought the movie would be successful, but the biggest movie of the summer?! The success of Jurassic World is so absurd, that despite huge hype and reviews that declare it the second coming, Inside Out looks to be the first Pixar movie not to open #1 on opening weekend.
Pixar took an uncharacteristic year off, opening no films in 2014. This was probably for the best. Pixar needed to reflect, producing what many consider to be mediocre to bad films since 2010’s Toy Story 3. By all indications, Inside Out is a return to form for the studio. This should be another money in the bank picture for the Pixar brand, and that’s exactly what it will be. It just might not open #1, and that’s fine. I think people understand the circumstances here. New Pixar franchises usually open in the $65-75 Million range, and Inside Out has a good chance to break past that due to word of mouth. I wouldn’t be totally shocked if Inside Out made way more than expected and pulled off the upset, but I guess that depends on Jurassic World.
Let’s look at the previous weekend record holder, Marvel’s The Avengers. Its drop was slightly above 50%. That’s pretty good. It also had ridiculous word of mouth, and faced weak competition its second weekend against Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows (insert cough sound effect). Jurassic World has a much bigger challenge with Inside Out, but word of mouth is fairly strong, despite mediocre reviews. Plus, you have the buzz of Jurassic World being the biggest weekend opener of all time, so it should have enough dino teeth to maintain its chomp on the #1 spot.
HOW WILL IT ALL BREAK DOWN…
Inside Out will do very well, but it’s not taking down team T-Rex.
1. Jurassic World — $101 Million
2. Inside Out — $79.5 Million
3. Spy — $9.5 Million
4. San Andreas — $5 Million
5. Insidious: Chapter 3 — $3 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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