Early reviews of City of Bones are tearing up the film as mundane, overly dependent on CGI, and just a bad adaptation in general. Considering the hype going into this weekend, an opening day around $3 million (right between Beautiful Creatures' $2.5 and The Host's $5.3) really is a kiss of death for the series unless it kills overseas. The film will be lucky to end up with $20 million for its five day opening.
The year's fourth YA adaptation will try to make box office magic this weekend, but can it overcome the demons that brought down Beautiful Creatures, The Host, and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters? Also: Lionsgate brings out their latest horror flick You're Next; The World's End, the final installment of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright's Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, lands in around 1,400 theaters on this side of the pond; and The Grandmaster makes its domestic debut in seven theaters. And Sony Classics makes a last minute change to add Blue Jasmine's nationwide expansion to this weekend's schedule.
YA fantasy adaptations are usually pretty difficult to predict. For every Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games there are several Beautiful Creatures, The Host, and Percy Jacksons, and those are just the flops from this year. These book series have large fan followings, but that obviously isn't always enough to perform well at the box office. Those three films opened to $7.5, $10.6, and $14.4 million respectively. In order to secure its sequel prospects, City of Bones needs an opening weekend above $20 million and a five day start (Wednesday to Sunday) around $45 million.
Lionsgate is definitely trying to cash in on this year's wave of blockbuster low budget horror films with You're Next. The year's top three horror films (The Conjuring, Mama, and The Purge) have already grossed a combined $264 million, but only cost a total of $38 million to produce. Including Evil Dead and Texas Chainsaw 3D, the year's top five horror films have all had opening weekends north of $20 million. All signs seem to be indicating that You're Next will continue this trend, so I'm predicting an opening weekend around $25 million.
The first two installments of the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz made a combined $37 million domestically. Edgar, Simon, and Nick have been steadily getting more well known on this side of the pond since those films, especially due to their involvement in Tin Tin, Scott Pilgrim, Paul, and Star Trek. Plus Martin Freeman's role finally got bumped up from cameo to co-star. Unfortunately it does have a few red flags. The film's release is much wider than the first two (607 and 825 theaters), but still pretty low compared to the weekend's other new releases. And the film's title is a little too close to This is the End, June's end of the world comedy that opened to $20 million and is still inching asymptotically toward $100 million. I don't think The World's End has much of a chance of matching that opening, but it should open around $15 million.
If Blue Jasmine continues to follow in the footsteps of Woody Allen's highest grossing film, Midnight in Paris, then he is going to be very happy this weekend. When Midnight expanded nationwide, it grossed $5.8 million from 944 theaters. Blue Jasmine is set to expand into around 1,200 theaters this weekend and has a good chance at grossing above $6 million. And if it holds as well as Midnight did, it should easily dethrone Midnight as Allen's highest grossing film.
Lastly, Weinstein is bringing China's The Grandmaster to domestic audiences. It will be pretty tough for it to gross more than $2 million this weekend since it's only in seven theaters, but it's already set to expand next weekend and should have a good run once it reaches audiences nationwide.
Tune in next week to see if thrillers Closed Circuit and Getaway can steal audiences from One Direction.
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