Weekend Box Office Analysis (May 13-15)

Well with no big wide releases happening this weekend, expectations were that Marvel Studios Thor would secure another week at number one. And they were not wrong. The God of Thunder took in $9.2M on Friday, $15M on Saturday and an estimated $10M on Sunday for a Weekend of $34M (-48%). That brings its domestic total to $115M and its worldwide cume now stands at $300M. Paramount/Marvel expected Thor would be down only about 50% week on week and its looking like it's only off 48% for its 2nd weekend, which would be a much better hold than Fast Five's a weekend ago (that dropped 68%).

This weekends biggest new entry was the Universal all-girl comedy Bridesmaids which blew away all expectations. On Friday the comedy brought in a suprisingly high $7.8M followed by an even better $10M on Saturday, leading to an estimated total of $24.4M for the weekend. Wow!! The studio had originally said it would be happy with $17-19 million -- well they got quite a bit more. There had been talk that female driven comedies had been put on hold until they saw how Bridesmaids did so this bodes very well for the future of women-heavy comedies. No longer will the likes of Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler be relied upon to open comedies.

Universal always seemed to have faith in this $32.5M-budget pic from the start, mostly pinned to the pedigree of mogul Judd Apatow's banner behind it. Weeks of decent tracking popped dramatically going into this weekend, especially in the "unaided awareness" category. It went into this weekend with great reviews from the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times and 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. With strong word of mouth, theres no reason why Bridesmaids cant make back its budget by Thursdsy night, but if thats a bit too optimistic, look for the Universal flick to be in the black by close of play on Friday. Universal were very clever with their marketing here, careful not to label it a "chick flick", a "wedding movie" or a "rom-com" but instead named it "The Hangover for women".

In third place was the Universal smash hit, Fast Five, down only 42% from the previous weekend, this pic, now in its third weekend is still going strong - much stronger than many in the industry had predicted. This is how Fast Five's weekend is looking, Friday $5.9M, Saturday $8.9M, which gives a $19.5M estimated weekend cume and pushes its domestic total to close to $170M and its worldwide total to close to $370M.

In fourth place was a new entry from Sony Screen Gems. Priest 3D went into the weekend on the back of some awful reviews and a unspectacular start last weekend in the UK -I for one though really enjoyed it and defended it in my review that I posted on The Reel Scoop several days ago. And the weekend results, similar to Bridesmaids are very good. On Friday Priest brought in $5.5M, Saturday $6M, which is looking like a $14.5M weekend cume -this is very much ahead of studio and industry wide expectations. Sony expected this young male-targeted Screen Gems post-apocalyptic horror pic to do only between $10M-$12M even with its Friday The 13th release date and higher 3D ticket prices.

This vampire movie elevated by the casting of Paul Bettany as the battle-hardened rogue warrior was all about the fangs in its marketing strategy. Screen Gems did well with its marketing, hitting the bullseye with its target audience, including screening footage with coordinated cast panels at both ComicCon in San Diego and WonderCon in San Francisco. Fangoria also hosted a special 3D footage screening attended by Paul Bettany and Scott Stewart in New York. Sony however, do believe strongly that Priest will perform much better overseas, but this higher than expected opening will certainly bring some comfort to the execs.

The rest of the top 10 looks like this:

5. Rio Friday $1.4M, Saturday $3.8M, Weekend $8M, Estimated Cume $124M
6. Something Borrowed Friday $2.3M, Estimated Weekend $7.0M Estimated Cume $26.1M
7. Jump The Broom Friday $1.9M, Estimated Weekend $7.3M Estimated Cume $25.2M
8. Water For Elephants Friday $1.2M, Estimated Weekend $4.1M Estimated Cume $48.4M
9. Madea's Big Happy Family Friday $550K, Weekend $2.2M Estimated Cume $49.8M
10. Soul Surfer Friday $475K, Estimated Weekend $1.8M Estimated Cume $38.9M.