Bold Box Office Predictions: July 17-19, 2015

Bold Box Office Predictions: July 17-19, 2015

Notable Openings This Weekend: Ant-Man, Trainwreck

EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING! A Marvel Studios movie opens this weekend! Time for praises of “so much fun!” and “Kevin Feige is a genius!” This is a weird one to predict because the early buzz was eh, but the reviews have been solid. I know it’s Marvel, the same studio that made Guardians of the Galaxy a mega hit, but I’m sorry, we’re talking about Ant-Man. It’s a superhero who commands ants. Do you think when Michael Douglas was on stage at the 1988 Academy Awards accepting an Oscar for Wall Street, he one day thought, “I’m going to be in an Ant-Man movie?” Probably not. We’ll have plenty of time to analyze Ant-Man, but we also got the new Judd Apatow film starring Amy Schumer, America’s comedic it-girl at the moment. It’s time to up the ante for this week’s box office predictions!

Let’s get this out of the way right now – Edgar Wright’s departure from Ant-Man will have minimal to zero effect on this weekend’s box office. While we in the blogosphere know who Edgar Wright is, Joe American has no clue he was ever involved with this project. The people who complain about him leaving the movie were people who were going to see this opening weekend anyway. They could have announced Joel Schumacher as replacement, and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

My gut tells me Ant-Man will be a massive disappointment in regards to the Marvel standard, but every time I predict doom and gloom for Marvel, I look like a moron. I’m going to try and avoid that. It will absolutely not do Guardians of the Galaxy numbers though ($94 Million+). The buzz surrounding that film was insane. Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011 opened at just over $65 Million. In 2013, Thor: The Dark World opened at just under $86 Million. Ant-Man should fall somewhere in between that. It won’t be Marvel’s best. It won’t be their worst. Everyone will say “I was expecting worst, but it was kind of fun,” and then we’ll all move on.

It’s hard to tell if Amy Schumer has a legit audience, or if she’s just a niche among hardcore fans. I guess we’ll find out this weekend. Amy seems like she’s here to stay though, and the positive reviews should help. This will probably do similar business to Spy earlier this year, which opened at just over $29 million. Despite the good word of mouth, I suspect there are enough people like me who are turned off by the trailers. Judd Apatow certainly has his audience though, so this should do respectable business, but nothing earth shattering.

HOW WILL IT ALL BREAK DOWN…

It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Minions defends its crown, but Ant-Man should be fine. I’m going to over predict Ant-Man’s projection. If I look like an idiot, it will be because I over predicted a Marvel movie for a change.

1. Ant-Man — $74 Million

2. Minions – $58 Million

3. Trainwreck – $26 Million

4. Jurassic World – $10.5 Million

5. Inside Out — $10 Million
===========================================================================================
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.
===========================================================================================