Notable Openings This Weekend: Pan, The Walk
Holy Cheez-Its and Goldfish, I’m back! Yes, it’s been a long time since my last box office predictions. Where have I been? Eh. Pretty much here. Look, you get busy for a few weeks, and then it becomes a bad habit of routinely not doing this. Cut me a break, alright! I made a New Years Resolution (I’m Jewish, so we’re talking about Rosh Hashanah New Years) to be more consistent with this. Let’s get back on track with a film that has Floppity Flop Flop written all over it.
Pan. More like “Panned.” Yup. I did it. There’s really not a whole lot to say here. It got delayed. Nobody cares. The reviews stink. The trailers look boring as hell. It’s got Garrett “Sam Worthington” Hedlund. I feel bad for Hugh Jackman, but he’ll get through this. The studio knew this was a stinker. They tried their best to cut their losses and move it from summer to fall, but there’s no hiding mediocrity. Everyone will skip this, stay home, and try to convince themselves Hook isn’t that bad.
The other movie we have is The Walk, which carries a big name director (Robert Zemeckis), star (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and well-known story. You know it’s the end of the year when you get these movies that start out in limited release, then go to mid-wide release, followed by “expands in more theaters,” then “expands in more theaters that still have The Simpsons Arcade game,” “expands to specialty Rocky Horror Picture Show-only theaters,” whatever. Yeah, so The Walk is in this weird spectrum of limited to wide release, which makes my job a lot harder. The I-MAX 3D marketing should give it a nice push.
HOW WILL IT ALL BREAK DOWN…
Just as Lloyd Bridges in Airplane! picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue, Pan chose a bad weekend to open. While there’s technically no new competition, it has the unfortunate task of riding off The Martian’s gold-laced dust. With bad reviews, Pan is going to get slammed by The Martian, and may not even finish second.
The Martian — $35 Million
Pan — $20 Million
The Walk — $19.5 Million
Hotel Transylvania 2 — $18 Million
Sicario — $8.5 Million