FRIDAY AM UPDATE: Official studio numbers are in, with New Line’s Zach Cregger horror pic Weapons armed with $5.7M and Disney’s Lindsay Lohan-Jamie Lee Curtis sequel Freakier Friday counting $3.1M.
For Weapons, that’s higher than the preview take of New Line’s Final Destination Bloodlines ($5.5M in May), as well as Warner Bros’ Sinners ($4.7M in April). Muy bien. Don’t get excited and call the movie at $50M+. yet Let’s just let this beauty of a scare play, and we’ll see how it legs out.
Thursday audiences in Comscore/Screen Engine PostTrak exits for Weapons show a very good 65% definite recommend and four stars. Guys over 25 bought 37% of the tickets, women over 25 and guys under 25 but were 23%, and women under 25 were 17%; overall the pic saw a male-skewing turnout at 60%.
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Freakier Friday had an 86% general audience, 9% parents, and 6% kids under 12 audience. Definite recommend is a good 61% with 4 1/2 stars from general audiences and 5 stars from kids and parents. Huge female turnout at 71% with 47% over 25, and 23% under 25.
Freakier Friday is booked at 3,975 theatres with 850 PLF screens and 150+ Dbox/motion screens (Huh?There’s no roller coaster in the movie). Freakier Friday will have daytime showtimes on the PLFs, while Weapons takes the evenings. Imax auditoriums belong to Cregger.
One femme millennial fave comp for Freakier Friday is Paramount’s musical reboot of Mean Girls which did $3.3M in previews before a $28.6M opening.
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Weapons played in 3,000 locations last night and rises to 3,200 this AM.
The rest of the week was as follows:
1.) The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Dis) 4,125 theaters, Thu $2.89M (-25% from Wednesday), Week $56.3M (-64%), Total $214.8M/Wk 2
2.) The Bad Guys 2 (Uni) 3,852 theaters, Thu $2M (-20%) Wk $33M/Wk 1
3.) The Naked Gun (Par) 3,344 theaters, Thu $1.46M (-16%), Wk $24.6M/Wk 1
4.) Superman (WB) 3,537 theaters, Thu $1.43M (-16%), Wk $21M (-44%), Total $323.4M/Wk 4
5.) Jurassic World Rebirth (Uni) 3,240 theaters, Thu $798K (-21%), Wk $13.1M (-35%), Total $322.1M/Wk 5
6.) Together (Neon) 2,302 theaters, Thu $581K (-35%), Week $10.5M, Total $14.5M/Wk 1
7.) Sketch (Angel) 2006 theaters, Thu $498K (-75%), Week $2.45M/Wk 1
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EXCLUSIVE: New Line’s Zach Cregger R-rated horror movie Weapons is currently seeing a preview figure in the neighborhood of the label’s earlier summer spooky movie, Final Destination Bloodlines, with $5M+. Walk-up business could drive it higher by the time we get the official number Friday morning.
Meanwhile, Disney’s sequel to 2003’s Freaky Friday, Freakier Friday, is around $3M in previews, sources tell us. Tracking pegged both movies’ openings at $30M+ earlier in the weekend, but we’ve heard in recent days that Weapons is pulling ahead with at least a low- to mid-$30M take or even more.
Fandango reported that Weapons ranked as the second-best horror ticket pre-seller of the year, behind Sinners at the same point in its sales cycle and ahead of Final Destination Bloodlines. It boasts excellent reviews at 97% certified fresh with an audience score of 90%.
Whether Weapons goes higher depends on whether this movie breaks beyond its core fan audience, who is showing up tonight and Friday. Horror movies, as we know, tend to be frontloaded. How do we know if Weapons isn’t frontloaded? It needs an ease by 12%-14% in its Friday/previews to Saturday. That was the Friday-to-Saturday dip for such movies as Us, Final Destination Bloodlines and Sinners.
Warners ran a very clever campaign, creating mystery as to why kids from a single a classroom fled their respective bedrooms in the middle of the night in a small town.
Weapons‘ preview cash is ahead of Sinners‘ $4.7M and might approach or pass Final Destination Bloodlines‘ $5.5M. Sinners‘ previews repped 24% of its $19.2M Friday, which translated into a $48M opening. Bloodlines’ previews were 26% of its $20.9M Friday, which turned into a $51.6M opening. Among original horror movies, not based on any pre-existing IP, Jordan Peele’s Us is tops in previews with $7.4M. That movie went on to do $28.9M first Friday and a 3-day of $71.1M.
Note both pics’ preview figures included Thursday showtimes plus Wednesday previews. Weapons had a showtime with Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas on Wednesday night, with previews starting Thursday at 2:17 p.m. — an odd time in reference to a specific time in the movie. Freakier Friday held Wednesday previews at 7 p.m., 22 years to the day after the original movie bowed, with showtimes kicking off at 2 p.m. today.
Freakier Friday‘s preview figure isn’t far from other PG-rated fare of late, Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King‘s $3.3M ($35.4M opening) and Warner Bros’ Wonka‘s $3.5M ($39M opening). No audience score yet on the Lindsay Lohan-Jamie Lee Curtis movie, but RT reviews are at 73% certified fresh.