"Lay the Favorite" follows unpredictable dreamer Beth as she goes from in-home stripper in Tallahassee to gambler's assistant in Las Vegas, working for Dink, one of the most successful sports gamblers in the business. She takes to the work like a natural, but makes the risky bet of falling for Dink, much to the chagrin of his retired showgirl wife Tulip. That bet goes south, and a triangular war ensues.
Against Dink's protests, Beth goes to work for the flamboyant, unstable Rosie who runs a less-than-legal operation in New York City, then for his doomed hyper-speed online sportsbook in the betting Babylon that is Curacao. When Beth's risky gambles result in her innocent boyfriend Jeremy threatened with prison, she must reunite with Dink, face up to the fearsome Tulip, risk jail, and return to New York City to confront her responsibilities. Can she beat the odds and win the day?
There are two wide releases coming out next week: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and The Call. Nearly everyone thinks The Incredible Burt Wonderstone will easily be the bigger of the two films. Of course, most think it will have to settle for second place. Regardless, it is the target film for this week's box office prediction contest. In order to win, one must simply predict the opening weekend box office number for The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.
Whoever comes the closest to predicting the film's opening 3-day weekend box office (Friday to Sunday), without going over, will win a copy of Lay the Favorite on DVD.
Meanwhile, whoever comes the closest to predicting the film's opening 3-day weekend box office (Friday to Sunday), without going under, will also win a copy of Lay the Favorite on DVD.
Entries must be received by 10 a.m., Pacific Time on Friday to be eligible, so don't delay!
To enter, send your prediction for the opening weekend gross, along with your name, address and phone number to contests@the-numbers.com. The winner will be determined on March 18th, 2013 once we have the official opening weekend results.
In the meantime, here's a deleted scene from the movie:
It's a strange week for home market releases. On the one hand, there are some terrific films that should do really well. On the other hand, after the top couple of titles, the quality of the releases plummets really fast. By the time we get outside of the top ten, we start to get mostly filler. The best film coming out this week is Schindler's List, which makes its Blu-ray debut this week. It is absolutely a must have; however, the Blu-ray is shovelware, which precludes it from being the Pick of the Week. The release that gets that honor is Wreck-It Ralph on either Blu-ray or 3D. It is worth paying the extra money for 3D, but not a lot of people have made the leap to 3D just yet.
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Lay the Favorite opened last November in limited release, but despite boasting an impressive cast and an Oscar nominated director, it never found an audience in theaters. It was also playing in Video on Demand, which usually kills a film's box office chances. Will it find a more receptive audience on the home market? Or was it destined to struggle no matter what?
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Hyde Park on the Hudson opened on top of the per theater chart with an average of $20,341 in four theaters. That is good for a limited release, but bad for a potential Awards Season contender, which is how many people saw the film prior to its release. Additionally, with weak reviews, it has little hope at long legs. Burn was much further back at $13,602, also in four theaters. Rust and Bone saw its theater count double to four, but its per theater average actually grew to $13,015. Its word-of-mouth is outstanding. Beware of Mr. Baker remained in the $10,000 club with $10,349 in one theater.
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It is a really, really busy week for limited releases. However, of the more than a dozen films on this week's list, only one of them is earning overwhelmingly positive reviews, Wagner and Me. That film is a documentary, so even if it does perform well during its opening weekend, it likely won't find any mainstream success. All of the rest are either earning too few reviews to have a Tomatometer Score, or have overall negative reviews. Combined with the previously released Awards Season hopefuls, and there's too much competition for such weak films.
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Because some of our sources provide box office data in their local currency, while we use USD in the graph above and table below, exchange rate fluctuations can have effect on the data causing stronger increases or even decreases of the cumulative box office.
Full financial estimates for this film, including domestic and international box office, video sales, video rentals, TV and ancillary revenue
are available through our research services. For more information, please contact us at research@the-numbers.com.
