Well, it is the Christmas season and I was clearly being way too generous with my weekend’s box office predictions. All titles that I predicted came in lower than my estimations and many were considerably lower.
As expected, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey retained the #1 spot, but dropped off quite a bit more than my prediction in its second weekend. The Tolkien tale took in $36.7 million, dropping 56%. I predicted $49.1 million. Oops.
As predicted, Tom Cruise’s action thriller Jack Reacher took the runner-up spot, earning $15.6 million, lower than my $17.6 million projection.
As predicted, the Judd Apatow comedy This Is 40 took third, grossing $12 million, lower than my $15.7 million projection.
Where I really went wrong: grossly overestimating the openings of Disney’s 3D Monsters Inc. re-release and the Seth Rogen/Barbara Streisand comedy The Guilt Trip. I predicted they would fill the four and five slots, but the two pictures were sixth and seventh. The Guilt Trip grossed $5.3 million over the weekend and $7.4M since its Wednesday opening (way below my $8.9M/$11.6M projection). Even worse, I predicted $12.3M for Monsters with a five-day gross of $16.2M. Not even close – the re-release sputtered with a $5 million weekend opening and $6.5M over the five-day.
This left holdovers Rise of the Guardians to be fourth ($5.9M) and Lincoln at fifth ($5.6M).
It will be fascinating to see how these pictures hold up this week and into the weekend. Christmas Day, in particular, is usually a huge box office day and many of these titles could hold up quite well. Then there’s the fact that Les Miserables, Django Unchained, and Parental Guidance join the fray on Tuesday. I’ll be trying to make sense of it all for my next predictions post for the Christmas week and next weekend, which I’ll hopefully have up by tomorrow evening, so you can leave my predictions with Santa along with the milk and cookies.
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