The Legend of Hercules – All My Life… I Wanted To Be A Blogster

The second weekend of 2014 brings three new wide release offerings for your consideration – the war drama Lone Survivor with Mark Wahlberg, Renny Harlin’s The Legend of Hercules, and Spike Jonze’s critically acclaimed Her with Joaquin Phoenix. You can peruse my individual prediction posts on them here:

My predictions reflect a belief that Lone Survivor should fairly easily open at #1. The Legend of Hercules could completely bomb, but I’m giving it enough credit to reach double digits at the three spot. Her likely won’t reach double digits.

Last weekend’s champ Frozen should slip to second while I am predicting holdovers The Wolf of Wall Street and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug will battle Her for slots 4-6.

And with that, my predictions for the weekend box office:

1. Lone Survivor

Predicted Gross: $21.7 million

2. Frozen

Predicted Gross: $13.5 million (representing a drop of 31%)

3. The Legend of Hercules

Predicted Gross: $11.9 million

4. The Wolf of Wall Street

Predicted Gross: $8.5 million (representing a drop of 36%)

5. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Predicted Gross: $8.4 million (representing a drop of 46%)

6. Her

Predicted Gross: $8.3 million

Blogger’s note: For the past several months, I’ve been doing box office results analysis every Sunday. Starting next week, I will be combining the results from the previous weekend with this here weekly predictions post for the next weekend which comes every Monday. The main reason: I’m usually busy Sunday doing my predictions posts for the next week’s newcomers, which will continue without interruption. Secondly, the final box office numbers come in Monday so I can more accurately update how I performed. Until next time, my friends!

Last year it was dueling White House in danger movies and in 2014, there are two Hercules pics and it begins Friday with The Legend of Hercules, Renny Harlin’s effort starring Kellan Lutz. In July comes Hercules: The Thracian Wars from director Brett Ratner and starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

The Legend of Hercules is highly likely to be the least successful of the pair. Lutz is mostly known for his role in the Twilight franchise and recently for possibly being Miley Cyrus’s boyfriend. He is not a known box office commodity and shouldn’t bring in moviegoers like The Rock probably will. With a reported $70 million budget, The Legend of Hercules is surely looking for a debut above $20 million, but I don’t see it happening. It doesn’t help that Lone Survivor with Mark Wahlberg opens against it and that picture is competing for essentially the same audience.

Perhaps this first Hercules of 2014 could surprise with a healthy gross, but I suspect it’ll struggle to get much past double digits.

The Legend of Hercules opening weekend prediction: $11.9 million