The battle for the weekend’s top spot on the box office charts is looking a lot closer than early reports suggested. While Ted’s $20 million Friday was pretty well known to be a reality by mid-afternoon yesterday, Magic Mike came out of nowhere with a massive Friday night boost which closed the gap to only $800,000 for the day. Simple extrapolation obviously shows a stronger showing from the Seth MacFarlane-directed film for the 3-day period; however, this is within the margin of error that convinces some that there is a real chance of an upset by Soderbergh’s male stripper movie.
Magic Mike was the director’s number one opening day performance of his career with $19.4 million, beating Ocean’s Twelve which found $14.7 million in its first Friday. This is quite the back stretch for the director who has been reportedly keeping an eye on the exits. Perhaps this successful effort will convince him to stay in the film industry past his next few efforts. He has been alluding to doing a stint on television after he takes a vacation, but obviously things could change.
Ted’s performance is not as shocking since that was yesterday’s story. This is one of the top original R-rated comedy openings of all time and it will undoubtedly fuel more film projects from Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. We are definitely going to stay tuned to anything relating to a follow-up effort from the animation producer especially considering there has been demand for a Family Guy movie that Fox may try to push out the door.
Other new arrivals were the predictably successful Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection and Alex Kurtzman’s directorial debut in People Like Us. The two opened to $10.3 million and $1.4 million respectively.
Here is the top ten chart for Friday, June 29.
Title – ($WEEKEND/$TOTAL)
1. Ted - $20.2 M / $20.2 M
2. Magic Mike - $19.4 M / $19.4 M
3. Brave – $10.3 M / $108.0 M
4. Madea’s Witness Protection - $10.3 M / $10.3 M
5. Madagascar 3 - $3.6 M / $171.8 M
6. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - $1.8 M / $24.9 M
7. People Like Us – $1.4 M / $1.4 M
8. Prometheus - $1.4 M / $114.7 M
9. Snow White and the Huntsman - $1.3 M / $142.5 M
10. The Avengers - $1.2 M / $603.3 M