See what I did there? I’m so creative. My mommy always said… so creative.
This weekend, the critically acclaimed Mission Impossible sequel will rule the box office. The last installment had a weird platform release where it opened in 425 theatres for 12.7M and then 5 days later went wide and got another 29M. So, if you figure that potential is around 40M, and that was in December, you can try and guess that Rogue Nation is going to do about the same.
The bigger problem is that the Mission Impossible franchise is starting to show its age. 18 years. 5 Films. One Tom Cruise. He’s still doing his own stunts, but a lot of teens haven’t seen the first Mission Impossible. Or the second. Or perhaps even the third. They’re just now looking at this franchise, and it feels like their parents franchise. So even with fantastic reviews, Rogue Nation is looking at a 40M weekend.
This weekends other new release is also kinda-sorta their parents franchise as well (if not their grandparents franchise by now). Yes, its a reboot, but a lot of teens have never seen National Lampoon’s Vacation. The only thing attracting them is the promise of raunchy comedy, and Ed Helms (who they know from The Hangover). Vacation isn’t getting the best reviews, but most films of this genre don’t get great reviews. Ed Helms, as a solo leading man is basically untested. And you can’t really compare it to the old Vacation films, because a lot has changed. You just have to look at similar like-minded films that opened about the same time, and figure Vacation should do about that. Social media tracking is also really getting more “on point” and their predictions are pretty accurate.
1) Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation- 40M Weekend, 40M Total
2) Vacation- 20M Weekend, 20M Total
3) Ant-Man- 14M Weekend, 132M Total
4) Minions- 13M Weekend, 287M Total
5) Trainwreck- 11.5M Weekend, 80M Total
6) Pixels- 11M Weekend, 44M Total
7) Southpaw- 10M Weekend, 34M Total
8) Paper Towns- 6.5M Weekend, 26M Total
9) Inside Out- 5M Weekend, 329M Total
10) Jurassic World- 4.5M Weekend, 632M Total
