The studio estimates are out for the weekend box office results, we have ourselves a temporary tie. David Ayer’s End of Watch and the Jennifer Lawrence horror film House at the End of the Street each found an estimated $13 million, giving no film claim to the throne of number one just yet. More precise data will be available tomorrow afternoon, at which point we might even have a dark horse winner in the Clint Eastwood-starrer Trouble with the Curve seeing how it is currently pegged at $12.7 million.
More drama lies with the abysmal debut of Dredd 3D from Lionsgate. The Pete Travis-directed film found only $6.3 million in its first three days of release which is terrible to say the least. This action flick cost $50 million to produce, suggesting a lot of money will be lost on this one. Odds are the foreign box office will not be able to save the film from true obscurity because someone decided it would be wise to go ahead with the global juggernaut Resident Evil 5 which generally goes for the same R-rated, gun violence-driven audience.
In regards to the leftovers, Resident Evil did continue its struggles at the domestic level by losing 68% of its week one total. Some anticipated that such a result would not happen because this fairly stable franchise had such a soft first weekend when compared to its predecessors.
My favorite story out of all of this is The Master which is a movie that does not exactly scream major market appeal. Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up to There Will Be Blood expanded to $5 million (from only 800 theaters) over the weekend, bringing its total to $6 million. At a cost of $35 million, it is important to point out that this is not a failure by any means. The picture is one of those award-buzz projects that will ride out a long and healthy box office run over the course of several weeks.
My feeling is Dredd will ultimately do enough to warrant a sequel. Every analyst is only looking at the 6 million Bo and not at he circumstances. The makers knew the film was a niche ,but from everything I’ve read from Alex garland to the stars, they were going for an uncompromising end product. Not a crappy unfaithful version of a popular European icon to cash in on the teen crowd. And that brings me to my second point; Dredd is popular overseas so it should recoup its costs from the other side. Don’t forget about the positive word of mouth slowly coming out and the audience in the states will generate from blu ray rentals and sales. Does anybody remember the beating highlander took in 86 box office but fan support and home video made the film into a franchise even though the movies continue to do very little in the states. Dredd is not dead.