The Evil Dead remake scared up some very solid box office numbers this weekend, opening well beyond my prediction. Dead earned $25.7 million, above my $19.8M projection. The Sam Raimi produced horror flick has a budget of only approximately $15 million. A sequel has already been greenlit. One minor concern for the studio: Dead received a troubling C+ Cinemascore grade, indicating audiences didn’t really like what they saw (critics were much kinder). Horror titles generally experience significant drop-offs in the second weekend and the same should be expected here.
Holdovers G.I. Joe: Retaliation and The Croods were close for second and third earning $20.8 and $20.6 million, above my $18.7M and $18.2M projections, respectively. Joe dropped only 49%, holding up considerably better than G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, which dropped 59% in its sophomore frame in 2009.
The 20th anniversary re-release of Spielberg’s Jurassic Park also exceeded my expectations with a strong $18.6 million. I predicted only $12.8M. Finally, Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor held up slightly better than my projection with $10 million in its second weekend (I estimated $8.9M).
In summation, this was a weekend where everything out there did better than I thought (an encouraging sign for the studios). Be sure to check back this week on the blog for next weekend’s box office predictions, when the Jackie Robinson biopic 42, Scary Movie V, and the Ryan Gosling/Bradley Cooper crime thriller The Place Beyond the Pines all open in wide release. Stay tuned!
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