May Wrap-Up

Ohh...I'm not that good at this.

April 29-Fast Five
My Predicted Opening: $60 million
Actual Opening: $83 million
Predicted total Gross: $130 million
Actual Total Gross: $197 million and counting.

Fast Five broke out beyond expectations and remains the top film of 2011, although The Hangover and Pirates sequels are both on the brink of passing it. Color me pleasantly surprised.

May 6-Thor
My Predicted Opening: $50 million
Actual Opening: $66 million
Predicted Total Gross: $120 million
Actual Total Gross: $162 million and counting.

Thor did better than I expected, but is hardly a breakout hit. It won't make $200 million, making it a bit more frontloaded than many were hoping. Good word of mouth can only do so much with something this stupid.

May 13-Who Cares? Bridesmaids did okay I guess.

May 20-Pirates 4
My Predicted Opening: At least $70 million
Actual Opening: $90 million.
Predicted Total Gross: $200 million
Actual Total Gross: $164 million and counting.

A lot fo people were disappointed with On Stranger Tides $90 million opening. This people were unreasonable. Most (normal) people HATE HATE HATED At world's End, so this was a big win, and the highest end of where I would have predicted.

May 26-Hangover 2
My Predicted Opening: $60 million
Actual Opening: $86 million
Predicted Total Gross: $200 million
Actual Total Gross: $135 million and just getting started.

Call it optimism. I didn't think America would lap up the same garbage a second time. Alas, the Hangover Part II made $135 million in five days, accounting for nearly 50% of total memorial day business. Sigh. Thankfully, word of mouth is Bad bad bad, so it might peter out before passing up the first horrible film's completely undeserved $277 million total.

Kung Fu Panda 2
My Predicted Opening: $70 million
Actual Opening: $48 million
Predicted Total Gross: $250 million
Actual Total Gross: $67 million and just getting started.

More optimism. For the record, this movie is awesome and deserves to make way more than this. Thankfully, most people agree with me and the word of mouth will be good. Still, reaching the first movie's $215 million total will be difficult, considering it's three day weekend was down 20% from the last film (even more so in attendance). Here's hoping it pulls a How To Train your Dragon, but it only has 29 days until Cars 2 opens, so I'll give it a safer goal of beating Madagascar 2 (which has earned a sequel) hitting the $180's, and making a killing overseas (which seems likely). PLEASE MAKE KUNG FU PANDA 3!

Overall thoughts:
In my last post I said I probably overestimated a few pictures, it looks like the opposite is mostly true. It was a record breaking memorial day (although not a record breaking may overall), but I still hold to my comments about June: very sketchy.

Stay tuned...