Friday Estimates: Perfect Guy and Visit Headed for Strong Debuts
September 12, 2015
What is traditionally the weakest weekend of the year isn’t looking too bad this morning, with The Perfect Guy and The Visit both posting solid opening day numbers on Friday. The Perfect Guy came out marginally ahead on the day, picking up an estimated $9.95 million compared to $9.22 million or so for The Visit. Both films will land over $20 million for the weekend, which is a victory at this time of year, but The Perfect Guy is expected to stretch its lead over the next couple of days.
The consensus is that The Perfect Guy will end up with a shade over $25 million Friday–Sunday, thanks in part to a good audience response to the movie. CinemaScore is giving the film an A-, although curiously the RottenTomatoes Audience Score is a more modest 70% (and critics give it only 25% thumbs up). After Straight Outta Compton and War Room, this will mark the fifth consecutive week that films with a predominantly African-American cast have led at the box office.
The Visit marks a welcome return to some sort of form for M. Night Shyamalan, with critics giving it a thumbs up 62% of the time. Having the marketing muscle of Universal behind it is obviously a help too. The film’s horror/suspense structure and young-skewing demographic points to towards relatively weak legs and a weekend in the low twenties is the most we can expect. That’s quite an uptick for Shyamalan, whose career was skewered by FiveThirtyEight.com yesterday.
In third place, War Room is off just 7% from last week, in part thanks to gaining a few more screens. The faith-based drama has now moved steadily past $30 million, and will pass Courageous to become Alex Kendrick’s most successful film this weekend. The strong performance may partly explain the relatively weak start for 90 Minutes in Heaven, which pulled in about $730,000 on Friday for 9th place on the chart, and will post $2.5 million or so for the weekend.
Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com
Filed under: Friday Estimates, The Visit, Straight Outta Compton, War Room, The Perfect Guy, 90 Minutes in Heaven, Alex Kendrick, M. Night Shyamalan