Image Credit: Disney The future is now. TRON: Legacy, the reboot of the 1982 cult classic, opened strong on Friday with an $18 million haul, according to early estimates. The Disney sequel, which was made for a whopping $170 million, pulled in an average of $5216 per its 3,400-some theaters. (A dollar number amped by casting a wide 3D net to 70% of those theaters.) And considering its A- score from CinemaScore audiences (A, interestingly, from the female participants), TRON: Legacy seems to have shed the mostly beloved stench of the original.
No such luck when it came to audience scores for the new James L. Brooks romantic comedy How Do You Know, starring the likable trio of Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, and Owen Wilson, which pulled in just $2.5 million. It’s been a while since moviegoers have rallied around a rom com and the tender-hearted among us hoped Brooks $100 million-efforts (youch!) would mine some of his past gold. Alas, reviews were decidedly dismissive, and CinemaScore audiences slapped it with a C-. Even more depressing, the film was nudged from the No. 5 spot by The Tourist‘s equally languid numbers. Somewhere, Brooks is moaning of a broken heart.
So all those Moms and Dads out there who might now be rethinking their date night plans may have the movie-going stamina on their hands to take the kiddos to Yogi Bear. The picnic-loving bear comedy opened up in the No. 2 spot, with a Friday take of $4.6 million. Look for him to stick around as parents search for activities in these long holiday weeks off from school.
Awards season contender The Fighter, which made a huge jump from 4 to 2,503 screens this week, slugged its way to the No. 3 spot with $3.9 million. Finally, it was dreary news for Aslan fans, as The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader stagnated in the No. 4 spot with $3.5 million.
1. TRON: Legacy—$18 mil
2. Yogi Bear—$4.6 mil
3. The Fighter—$3.9 mil
4. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader—$3.5 mil
5. The Tourist—$2.5 mil
Box office preview: TRON: Legacy looks to leave Yogi Bear and Reese Witherspoon in dust
I’m surprised Tron: Legacy opened at only 3400 theatres, why not a wider release?
Because a wider variety of films come out in the holiday season, you won’t find a film in December to open with more than 3600 theaters. Whereas in the summer, there’s usually only one distinctive film releasing each weekend. In December, not only are there more films releasing at once, but also expanding films. 3400 is a really good number actually. That’s all that Avatar had
Tron Legacy killed the competition. It destroyed all the other movies. Way to go Tron. This ought to show the haters who thought that it would do badly. Suck on that haters.
Tron did not kill the competition. Tron is going to have a $44 million domestic opening and a worldwide opening of $66 million.
That is definitely an underwhelming opening, especially considering the budget and marketing costs.
C’mon Narnia fans! Dawn Treader is my favorite movie of the year!
Yes its a good movie, but a mix of a terrible predecessor (Prince Caspian) and terrible marketing has doomed the franchise. They really messed the franchise up with Prince Caspian.
Better movies have performed worse at the box office.
That said, stick a fork in it, it’s done.
You need to see more movies, obviously.
I like the Narnia books, but the movies have gotten progressively worse. The whole evil fumes plot that was invented for the movie really detracted from the movie and changed its tone. Worst part is that the 4th book (The Silver Chair) was the best book, and Dawn Treader has probably killed any chance of that being filmed.
The 4th was Prince Caspian.
4th by publishing order is the Silver Chair.
@Dave: Oh, I forgot they were published in a different order. Okay then, makes sense.
An $18 million opening day is not “strong” when the budget for the movie is $170 million and has been massively promoted.
It is when you’re likely to quadruple your opening weekend in December. And $18mil will lead to around $48mil opening weekend. Do the math
18 million is a very good opening considering it is going to do big numbers this week with schools out and Christmas weekend coming up, which always posts big numbers especially for family films. Also Inception opened to about the same numbers and went to gross almost 300 million domestic.
Tron is no Inception. There is no way Tron will make as much as Inception.
Inception opened with $22 million for a $66 million weekend. No way will Tron: Legacy have the same numbers.
I don’t think that it will make as much money as inception either. I just meant that with a 50 million weekend and an A CinemaScore and Christmas coming up, not to mention that Disney films always perform well worldwide, that it will more than make up for the 170 million budget and the massive promotion campaign.
More interestingly, “Black Swan” is at #7…pretty big news, considering that it’s in about 1/3 of the number of theaters compared to most of the top 10.
Yep, glad Black Swan’s performing so well in so few theaters. Definitely my favorite of the year so far.
Why do you keep reporting that ‘how do you know’ only cost $100 million, it cost $120 million according to every other site. It had expensive reshoots. It’s making the same amount of money as ‘love and other drugs’ another rom-com released during the same season.
It cost 120 million to make but after tax rebates, it ended up costing the studio 100 million.
Thought Black Swan would do a little better than it did. Hope Yogi Bear dies a horrible, painful death. But then again, the last movie I saw in the theater was The Town (which was friggin awesome!) so who am I to talk.
I’m just happy that whore Nicole Sperling didn’t write this article!
The Town is overrated, but Inception is worse than that. What a load of crap. A colossal waste of time, money and talent, but it made a crap load of money so it is qualified as a good movie?
You realize that Black Swan is in, as others have said, a THIRD of the theaters most of the other releases are in, right? Right?
Is that you Sperling? You do realize that $2.5 mil is still disappointing for 1,000 screens right? Right??
@Matt1: You do realize that its PTA will be more impressive than the others, right? Right??
Why does ew consistently not give Black Swan good coverage? It has a better screen average than the fighter, it only grossed a little less than The Tourist and How Do You Know… plus its still in less than 1000 theaters! I don’t get it!
I think it’s clear that this holiday season is being affected by the economy and people choosing to spend money on gifts and home entertainment rather than go to the movies.
And before anyone says “it’s the quality of the movies” I don’t need to remind you that horrible, horrible movies perform like gangbusters all the time.
Ok, I am NOT a narnia fan but this review is very harsh towards narnia and very biased towards Tron. Let’s start with narnia first: It’s 57% decline from last friday was better then the first two movies, and it’s headed for a weekend of about 13 million, which would be a 45% drop–MUCH better then the drops of comparable movies like The Golden Compass which fell 61% and Eragon which fell a whopping 70%. It will hold decently over the weeks ahead into the new year. And Tron’s 18 million is solid, and a great opening day for december which has movies start smaller and hold up well. But don’t overrate it.
Bradd, the report isn’t harsh toward Narnia. The box office numbers for Friday are REALLY bad because it had such a poor opening (it’s openeing weekend was way worse than Capsian, which wasn’t great).
With such a poor opening, Narnia couldn’t have a big drop. It had to hold up well.
On Friday night alone, Tron made almost what Narnia made all last weekend!
But one could also say that the smaller drop between weeks 1 and 2 could be due to the fact that this movie only made half of what the last Narnia movie did in its first weekend, so it didn’t have near as far to fall. I’m not slamming the movie, just stating some logic.
Yet regardless of how they try to slice it, Narnia will not cross 100 million dollars..so face it, this franchise died with the Dawn Treader. So I guess Disney was right to dump this series.
Looks like Yogi is more popular then Jesus… Er, Aslan
America loves crap. It’s the only reason Yogi Bear exists.
And Alvin and the Chipmunks.
I saw The Fighter today – definitely one of the best movies I’ve seen so far this year; can’t recommend it enough.
Come off it, Bradd Bradd. Narnia will gross 13 million dollars this weekend only in your imagination. The report clearly states that it only grossed 3.5 million Friday. At best it might make it to 11.5 million if it has a strong Saturday. More than likely it’ll end up with an actual total in the 10 million dollar range give or take a few hundred thousand dollars.
Tron was an amazing film and deserves to win big at box office. I see it doing very well. As for Dawn Treader, i have never been a fan myself, but hear the books are good and the movies are, but the problem is that they don’t carry a huge fan base as compared to say Harry Potter. And the fact that they didn’t market as well as they should have.
Black Swan was a very good movie, not the best the director has come out with but good.
And EW predicted that Tron was only going to gross $40 million this weekend. Dummies.
They predicted $45 million, so far it looks like those predictions still stand.
No way, it’s headed for 50+
It’s not getting to $50 million without a really strong Saturday. The $45 million prediction looks like it’ll be pretty accurate.