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Hot Trailer: ‘The Great Gatsby’ 
SUNDAY AM: It was a great weekend at the box office with the total tally $202M, up an impressive +41.4% from last year. And that doesn’t factor in next week which features the most anticipated movie of the summer, Chris Nolan’s Inception. Year to date, 2010 revenues are running $5.9M, that up 5.06% over last year. But attendance is down 1.42%. Summer 2010′s grosses are even more important internationally than domestic for a lot of motion pictures. So in this extended report I’ve included additional detail on the overseas releases all heavily impacted by World Cup play:
1. North American box office numbers show that Universal Pictures is enjoying something it hasn’t had in a very long time: a big fat hit film. That’s because weeks of great parent-kid family tracking for Despicable Me 3D translated into what even rival studios told me was ”amazing” attendance of Friday’s $21.7 million and Saturday’s $21.3M for a $60.1M weekend opening despite having two other 3D family films in the marketplace. Still, Despicable Me found 3,476 theaters, of which 1,551 locations were in 3D, and managed to double Universal’s expectations of opening domestic grosses. Exit polling data showed the film received an “A” Cinemascore and the audience was 55% kids 12 years and under and parents.
You’ve got to credit those wonderful movie trailers and TV ads that communicated the movie’s bold originality. (Who doesn’t want minions trailing them!) Despicable Me is the first 3D CGI film from Universal’s animated/family-film production company partner, Illumination Entertainment, whose founder Chris Meledandri is one of the foremost names in family animation and helped build Fox’s animation division and Blue Sky Studios, where he executive produced the first two Ice Age films and Horton Hears A Who! This will be the start of a big new business for Uni, not to mention a big new franchise. Most amazing is that the budget for the film is only $69 million considering how visually accomplished it is.
Internationally, Despicable Me will roll out over the next few months but kicked off with openings in 4 markets: Russia, Indonesia (No. 1), Malaysia, Singapore (No. 1) and grossed an estimated $5M at 736 dates this weekend. More dates overseas will roll out over the next few months with the pic’s next releases in Thailand, Ukraine and U.A.E. on July 15th. Mexico opens July 30th, Brazil August 6th.
2. It was a $33.4M second weekend for Summit Entertainment’s holdover Eclipse after the Twilight Saga threequel made $11.1 million Friday and another $12.4M Saturday from its record-setting wide release of 4,468 locations. That down -49% from a week ago. New cume after 12 days in theaters is a gigantic $237M in U.S. and Canada, +$2M ahead of New Moon. Everyone knew this was a front-loaded pic but the World Cup-slowed rollout overseas puts Eclipse No. 1 this weekend in all 3 major markets where it opened – France (9.8M Euros or $12.4M USD), South Korea (1.1M admissions), and the UK (13.8MM GBP or $21M USD). The international weekend cume is now $81.1M, and $219M total from 63 markets. That makes the worldwide cume to date for the 2D film: $456 million. Yowza!
3. Robert Rodriguez also is a magician when it comes to filmmaking budgets, especially at his Troublemaker studios in Austin. Still, it’s a shocker that in this day and age of $300M negative cost movies he managed to bring in Twentieth Century Fox’s Predators for just $38M as its producer. That takes enormous pressure off this R-rated scifi actioner riffing off the 1987 original with Adrien Brody substituting for Arnold Schwarzenegger. (I know… I know… because Alex Litvak & Michael Finch reworked the characters created by Jim & John Thomas. It looks to perform on target with $10.4 million Friday and $8.4M Saturday and an on-target $25.3M opening this weekend from 2,661 theaters.
Predators stalked 22 day & date international markets this weekend for $18M from 3,100 screens. UK ($3.5M from 391 locations), Japan ($2.8M from 373 screens), Russia ($2.8M from 700 screens), and Australia ($2.3M from 209 screens) led the opening markets. Nine new markets open next weekend, including France, Italy and Belgium.
4. Starting its 4th week in release, Disney’s Toy Story 3 keeps raking it in. The 3D megahit made $6.6 million Friday and $9M Saturday for a $22M weekend and mighty new cume of $340.2M. Today, Toy Story 3 moves into 16th place among the highest grossing films in domestic box office history. Also today, it becomes the highest grossing animated film in Pixar/Disney’s domestic box office history and Disney’s 2nd highest grossing domestic movie of all time behind only Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest).
This weekend, its international weekend tally is $39.1M in 39 territories representing 55% of the international market. With its overseas cume of $213.1M, Toy Story 3 now has a whopping global cume of $553.3M.
5. On its 9th day in release, Paramount’s The Last Airbender made $5.2 million Friday and $6.7M Saturday for a $17.1M weekend from 3,233 dates, -57% from a week ago, and a domestic cume of $100.2M.
Overseas, the pic is opening slowly because of the World Cup. Paramount says it debuted with $10M from Russia and 3 smaller markets. It opened with $8M in Russia, coming in first in the market vs the opening of Despicable Me and was 63% higher than the opening last summer of G.I. Joe.
6. Grown Ups (Sony) Week 3 [3,463 Theaters]
Friday $5M, Saturday $6.4M, Weekend $16.4M, Cume $111.3M
This has now become Adam Sandler’s 11th picture to hit $100 million in the last 12 years. “Pretty amazing accomplishment that demonstrates how consistently successful Sandler has been as a box office powerhouse,” a Sony Pictures spokesman said today. (His list of other $100+M performers is: Waterboy 1998, Big Daddy 1999, Mr Deeds 2002, Anger Management 2003, 50 First Dates 2004, Longest Yard 2005, Click 2006, Chuck and Larry 2007, Zohan 2008, Bedtime Stories 2008.) This week Grown Ups showed the best hold of all top films in release with only a -14% drop over last weekend.
7. Knight and Day (Fox) Week 3 [2,628 Theaters]
Friday $2.3M, Saturday $3.2M, Weekend $7.8M, Cume $61.9M
KNIGHT & DAY continues to hold, with only a -25% drop this weekend compared to last. Internationally, where the Tim Cruise-Cameron Diaz starrer was supposed to shine, the movie landing in 5 new markets for a weekend cume of $10.4M from 2,437 screens in 30 markets. That brings the international cume-to-date to $38.5m. Next weekend finds 20 new markets releasing, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Holland, Mexico, Spain and Sweden.
8. Karate Kid (Sony) Week 5 [2,458 Theaters]
Friday $1.7M, Saturday $2.2M, Weekend $5.7M, Cume $164.6M
The film crossed $200M worldwide this weekend and has generated $42.1M overseas. The reboot has now grossed $206.7M worldwide, with most territories still to open.
9. The A-Team (Fox) Week 5 [1,236]
Friday $550K, Saturday $720K, Weekend $1.8M, Cume $73.9M
The foreign tally is now $54.5M, or 42.5% of its worldwide cume of $128.5M.
10. Cyrus (Fox Searchlight) Week 4 [200 Theaters]
Friday $365K, Saturday $586K, Weekend $1.3M, Cume $3.5M
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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You are right on about how great the ads and trailers have been. I want to see Despicable Me, and my 4 and 6 year old daughters want to see it as well. I am looking forward to it.
Nikki,
How did “The Girl Who Played With Fire” do? I dont recall you reported on ‘Dragon Tattoo.’ Don’t skip over those money making movie series like you ignored “Hurt Locker” last summer.
BTW, ‘Predators’ looks AWFUL… (“LOOK OUT!!!”)
“is Predators really a box office smash? A 65% second-weekend drop is practically inevitable, and word-of-mouth isn’t exactly on fire to begin with.”
Actually it’s one of the better reviewed movies of the whole summer. What were you expecting?
She didn’t say it was a smash, it says it’s “on target,” which it is. After the horrible AVP movies and PREDATOR 2 being, oh, 20 years ago, I think it’s actually a reasonable result for the movie.
Predators was okay. The more the title creatures participated, the worse the movie seemed to get. The first part of the movie, where the abductees band together and try to figure out what’s going on, was very strong. When it drifted a way from suspense and tried to satisfy the franchise requirements of horror and action, the inexperience of the director started to shine through. I was Rodriguez himself would’ve directed. I still commend the man for keeping production costs down, though, because the movie looked great at that economic price tag.
Now only one week until INCEPTION…
Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking. Only 5 more days now!
INCEPTION will change Hollywoods definition of a summer movie.
Where’s this week’s explanation/apology of how Knight and Day is actually doing really, really well?
Positive word of mouth is spreading, i just hope that the people who do see it and loved it as much as I do — I really think it’s the best movie of the year thus far — will tell others to see it. If you ever liked tom cruise in your lifetime, you will not be disappointed. This is one great, great movie.
Looks like it could also be almost a -60% drop on Airbender as well. Final numbers pending….
Despicable Me’s “bold originality”? Is that a joke? That’s what counts for originality in Hollywood these days?
Did you even see the film? It is pretty original, especially for an animated ‘kids’ movie. I thought it was going to suck, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was very funny and the plot was more creative than any animated movie I’ve seen in a while, including Toy Story 3 (not quite as good overall though).
“weeks of great parent-kid family tracking”
Unfortunately, the great tracking/marketing meant that almost all the funny bits have been seen in the proportional materials. The movie becomes a case of “oh, I laughed at bit the first time I saw it”. Deflating pyramid a surprise? Nope, saw it. Frozen people at coffee shop? Nope. Balloon animal? Nope. Vector’s security system? Nope. It’s so fuzzy? Nope. Roller coaster ride? Nope. Fart gun? Nope. Stole the Statue of Liberty? Nope Kid hitting her cheeks? Nope.
Unlike Toy Story 3, I don’t see this one as a repeat movie…I feel like I already saw it twice.
*promotional* of course
You do realise that some of your domestic bombs in the us make most of there money from the rest of the world in the end ? Don’t write some films off till you see how they do overseas later on…
*this week’s explanation/apology of how “Knight and Day” is actually doing really, really well.
No, Knight & Day isn’t doing that great domestically, and it isn’t going to end up as a huge hit, but if you want to ignore the current fact that it hasn’t yet opened in several big foreign markets (the UK for example) and therefore hasn’t finished earning internationally then knock yourself out.
The big foreign markets (the UK for example) consume a lot of U.S. entertainment media. So the European or Asian audiences will be very aware that this big American movie failed to find an American audience.
Your movie hasn’t “finished earning,” but it’s unlikely overseas filmgoers will lining up for newly arrived Fail.
All that being said, I’m glad you enjoyed it/enjoyed making it. See it again if you can find any screens. Knock yourself out!
Actually I haven’t seen it yet as it hasn’t opened in the UK – so it’s not my ‘fail’ at all (nice try though).
Once I have I’ll be able to tell you if I liked it or not. Defending it was not the intention of my post. Whatever is going on in 2010 it’s not the only film to come in under par so far.
I’m simply pointing out that final numbers for it are not in. And won’t be for a while.
I just saw Despicable Me with the kids. It was better than OK, but nowhere near as satisfying as How To Train Your Dragon or anything by Pixar. This one is definitely geared for the youngster crowd, with not much else to satisfy an adult aesthetic. But, like Shrek, this one will spawn plenty of sequels and generate lots of money.
The take away from this thread is Robert Rodriguez and what he did on that budget. Studio execs should get schooled by him.
Keep in mind with ECLIPSE though that the Wednesday release took a lot of heat off of the weekend and the big dip experienced on the fourth of July won’t be there this Sunday so it should have a way better hold. Just keeping things in perspective.
Got to hand it to the cartoons this year… first Toy Story and now this… the input costs to yield makes these movies tremendous hits, proportionally better than, say, Eclipse or Avatar. I could be wrong, but that’s my hunch anyway. Any thoughts?
bobby the saint, your hunch is exactly wrong, starting with the idea that films like Toy Story are cheap to make. I didn’t find numbers on TS3, but TS2 cost 90M to produce. TS3 would be more expensive, what with the inflation and 3D. A similar movie, How To Train Your Dragon cost 165M to produce.
Avatar’s production budget was 237M, and it has made eleven times that amount worldwide, and is looking at a re-release.
Eclipse was made for 68M and it’s earned 4.5 times that amount worldwide already.
Toy Story 2 cost 90M to produce and it made about five times that amount worldwide.
How To Train Your Dragon cost 165M to produce, and it has only made 3 times that amount worldwide.
If the last airbender is that bad — it would not increase on Saturday. I’m starting to wonder if critics and first audience reaction is wrong. Can someone out there who liked it — speak up? Cuz i still don’t care to see it. And are people really enjoying Grownups — I’m a huge adam sandler fan but this is one of his laugh free movies with a great cast — It’s Knight and Day that everyone should be going to see— so much fun from start to finish. If you want to have a good time at the movies, Knight and day is the movie to see.
This movie has the feel of one written by an executive-turned-writer). Litvak’s an insufferable creep.
What surprises me is that Predator was only released into 2669 locations, being a summer movie, I thought it at least deserved a theater count of 3000. I guess this can be attributed to the hogging of screens by other blockbusters. Bring on Inception….
A case of too little, too late for Knight & Day. Even with an excellent hold this weekend the best it can hope for now is to finish with around $85 Million Domestic. Pretty much in the same league as Tom’s last movie Valkyrie.
However the good news for Tom & Fox will surely be that the flick is doing much better overseas and it’s a lock for around $130 Million+ abroad.
And Tom has certainly earned a lot of goodwill back from the public with this movie. Though that won’t reflect on Knight & Day’s boxoffice numbers immediately it will on his next project’s opening weekend should it end up being MI:4!
And for the record just want to point out that Neither Vanilla Sky nor The Last Samurai would have never crossed the $100 Million dollar Milestone domestically had it not been for the fact that they were both released during the lucrative holiday period in December and the Christmas/New Year weekends bounce and the unusually strong weekday numbers during that month made it possible.
And Tom’s Collateral which was a summer release like Knight & Day but came out in August ended up getting to $101 Million Domestically because it got a little bounce just enough to put it over the milestone during labor day weekend of that year.
So, even before all the Craziness started it was purely good release strategy and perhaps a little bit of luck which kept his GOLD streak at the boxoffice going. His Star Power never really tore it up during opening weekends except when it’s the Mission Impossible series or an EVENT MOVIE LIKE WAR OF THE WORLDS. Heck, even Minority Report’s $35 Million opening despite the addition of another strong brand name like Steven wasn’t really jaw dropping.
Had Knight & Day been released in December regardless of it’s competition I am willing to bet that it’s an easy $115-125 Million Domestic Grosser because the demographic the movie is playing to simply would have been able to give it super-strong weekday numbers.
2 misconceptions by some posters on this thread:
despicable me IS as good as any pixar film out there, at thats coming from someone who saw ToyStory 1 thru 3 twice. It has something for adults AND kids in it. possibly its more kid based but not by much. Its very funny. the interaction between gru and the 3 orphan girls is funny yet heartfelt but not sugary coated. the girls are strong characters and smart. and then there is the MINIONS. just think of what you get when you combine 101 dalmatians, 7 dwarves and the gremlins.
stay during the credits for more hilarious fun & insanity. one of the best movies all year.
in regards to the animated costs, nt sure what they average per net profit per flick but someone said that eclipse’s percentage give back wasnt very good, thats not quite tru. it cost about $68-$80 to make and it made back over 3x that by now. since avatar never released what its investment was we will never know its rate of return. and the animated movies arent hat cheap to produce.
just saying.
eclipse is a cheap movie to put out and to be a tentpole giant as it is. no mystical creatures or big set pieces set in cities. eclipse is really just one big low-budget after-school 70s special but done in the new millenium with the eye candy & sound track that movie goes expect. but its a fairly basic-looking and simple plotted movie. Its no harry potter or lord of the rings visual extravaganza.
I am disappointed you didnt mention The Kids Are All Right. Saw it at the LA Festival and it was one of the better movies I’ve seen in the last couple years.
And it didnt really well this weekend in limited release.
Here is the initial official weekend estimate:
‘Despicable’ is delightful at weekend B.O.
3D toon from Universal is No. 1 with estimated $60.1 million
By PAMELA MCCLINTOCKIn a much needed victory for Universal, 3D toon “Despicable Me” grossed an estimated $60.1 million at the domestic B.O. from 3,476 locations, easily bumping “Twilight Saga: Eclipse” from the No. 1 spot.
And in another resounding victory for the U family, Focus Features’ indie pic “The Kids Are All Right” nabbed the best opening screen average of the year at $72,127, grossing an estimated $504,888 from seven locations.
I think it’s pretty obvious that people see movies like “Despicable Me”, pixar films and things like “Avatar” for the effects. Hollywood should only release computer animated films since they don’t need to be any good to make a lot of money
Bill H,
Animated films still need to be good to make a lot of money.
not really, as I said people see them for the effects and the visceral feeling of seeing them in the thater. Even ones that are terrible make money
Knight and Day with only a 2M drop from last week, looks like it has some staying power
Predator was awesome! I loved every minute of it. It’s the type of movie that motivate me to leave the comforts of watching movies at home to see them in the theater.
I saw it Friday night at Grauman’s Chinese theater. Everything from the story and its premise to the sound quality at Grauman’s to Adrien Brody’s and even Tohper Grace’s performances was excellent. The writers and their entourage must have been there that night because they all screamed with joy when the writer’s names appeared at the end of the credits. How wonderful for them to experience something so exciting. Apparently their first screen credits according to IMDB. Who wouldn’t be happy for these guys but the jaded?
I thought the characters made the movie. Nicely developed and interesting back stories. And who doesn’t love Danny Trejo? If I were stuck on a planet being stalked by aliens these are the people I would want to be hanging out with. Adrien Brody looked great. He was super buffed in this role. I hope he sticks to these types of roles because it certainly suits him.
I applaud Robert Rodriquez for producing it for $38 million. It all goes to show how ridiculous budgets are on studio films that costs over $100 million. I still can’t wrap my head around that one. But to make this Mastery of sci-fi action for just $38 million the example more movies should follow.
What works best for me on this movie is how the filmmakers created the look of a film that reminds me of a modern-day sci-fi film from the 1950s. They kept it simple, entertaining and it was filled with suspense and fun to watch. I had fun watching this movie. I can’t wait to see it again.
Spy Kids 4, as well as any Sin City film, will not be produced by Disney; but in fact for The Weinstein Company as they control all rights to make sequels based off the franchises and properties they set-up at Dimension/Miramax. Rumor is that Spy Kids 4 will be Rodriguez’s last film with the Weinsteins as their relationship has been pretty strained after the release of Grindhouse.
How about John Cohen at Illumination? Everyone is raving about Meledandri but he couldn’t have done this w/out Cohen who has been with him since the beginnings of Fox Animation. Cohen is also the producer and I know the writers and directors…he worked hard on this project.Congrats to the whole team at Illumination! Uni needs you!