Friday Box Office: 'Ender's Game' Scores $9.9m, Aims For $27m Weekend

Despite months of mixed buzz, little star power outside of Harrison Ford in a supporting role, and controversy of author Orson Scott Card’s anti-gay (and vaguely racist) political views, Lionsgate’s Ender’s Game debuted with solid opening day numbers.  Mostly financed by OddLot, the $110 million adaptation of Card’s acclaimed and much-celebrated sci-fi novel from 1985 earned a decent $9 million on its first Friday.  That’s over/under what The Host ($10.6m), Beautiful Creatures ($7.5m), and The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones ($9.3m) earned over their entire respective Fri-Sun debut weekends.

Barring massive front-loading and/or a crash-and-burn over the next few weeks, this should somewhat reverse the trend of failing young adult fantasy literary adaptations post-Hunger Games. Presuming a somewhat anticipated but not horribly front loaded debut weekend (think 2.75x), expect an opening weekend of just over/under $27 million. So it’s playing like Eragon and The Golden Compass thus far (around $28m debut/$70-$75m domestic finish), for better or worse.

The next new wide release is CBS CBS Film’s Last Vegas. The Sin City-set comedy centers around four old friends who reunite in Vegas for one last bachelor party and it stars Robert De Niro, Kevin Kline, Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas, and Mary Steenburgen. The film wisely cost just $28 million to produce, so its $5.1 million opening day, setting the stage for a $14 million debut weekend, will lead to easy profitability, as the film’s target older audience checks out the film when they find it convenient rather than rushing out on opening weekend.

The last new release is Relativity’s Free Birds.  The $55 million Thanksgiving time-travel/parable for Native American genocide cartoon earned an okay $4 million on its first Friday, setting the stage for an over/under $14 million debut. This is Relativity’s first foray into animation, along with Reel FX, and the hope is obviously that the film will play during the run-up to Thanksgiving until it gets wiped off the map by Disney’s Frozen over the actual Thanksgiving holiday.  Considering how few Thanksgiving movies we generally get during the season (most holiday releases are Christmas themed), that strategy might work, but considering the high cost, it will need a little luck to score anywhere outside of America thanks to its centering around explicitly American holiday.

Universal also debuted About Time in 175 screens in advance of next weekend’s wide release.  The Rachel McAdams/Bill Nighy time travel dramedy from Richard Curtis earned $314,000 on its first day, setting the scene for an over/under $1m debut weekend and a merely okay over/under $5,500 per-screen average.  In holdover news, Gravity lost 683 screens this weekend, including pretty much all of its prized IMAX engagements thanks to Ender’s Game. As such, the film took a 41% drop from last Friday, somewhat large for this leggy wonder, pulling in $3.6 million.  That should pan out to an over/under $12 million weekend for a new domestic cume of around $220 million.

The good news is that, aside from the loss of those IMAX screens, this will be the toughest weekend until Thanksgiving, with only four wide releases Thor: The Dark World, The Best Man Holiday, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and The Delivery Man) along with the expansion of this weekend’s limited debut About Time >coming along to steal screens over the next three weeks. Still, it’s a sign of how hard it is for the leggiest would-be blockbuster to maintain momentum when you lose screens purely due to copious new product week-in and week-out.

Expanding semi-wide to 410 screens, Fox Fox Searchlight’s 12 Years A Slave earned a decent, but not spectacular $1.27 million, setting the stage for a solid $3.5m weekend with an over/under $10,000 per-screen average.   Paramount’s Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa earned $6m in its second Friday, down a somewhat reasonable 52% from last Friday. It’s the lowest Friday-to-Friday drop for any Jackass picture. The stage is set for an over/under $20m weekend. It has earned $47m thus far and should cross $55m tomorrow. Captain Phillips brought in another $2.43m for a current domestic cume of $76.4m. It should cross $80m by tomorrow or Monday.

That’s it for today.  There will be more holdover reports tomorrow, as well as a look at how Thor: The Dark World performed in its first overseas week of release. It’s earned $45 million since opening on Wednesday in several dozen overseas markets. Until then, take care.