Fearless Forecast - A 'Nightmare' at the Box Office

Why will there be such a huge separation between this weekend's two new releases at the box office? After all, neither has a positive review yet at Rotten Tomatoes and they're only separated by about 300 theaters. So why will one make about $30 million more than the other? Because one of them is Furry Vengeance, a live-action talking animal movie starring Brendan Fraser and the other is A Nightmare on Elm Street, one of the more recognized movie brands in the last quarter century, for good or bad. To be fair, I'm not sure the animals talk in Furry Vengeance, but they certainly have heightened consciousness. Based on the reviews, that's more than can be said for the writers. Elm Street is a reboot, casting Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Krueger, and as these horror remakes go, I think the marketing to this point has been the strongest. Good trailers, Haley looks (and sounds) convincing, and genre fans and former genre fans alike might be inclined to check it out, especially since most of them haven't paid to see a new release since Clash of the Titans. Like most of these Platinum Dunes movies, I don't think Elm Street will be around very long. For one thing, the horror remakes fade faster than just about any other category of film and next week is Iron Man 2. So if it does $35 million or so this week, which is not outside the realm of possibility, then it should tumble to about $12 million next weekend. But these movies are cheap and designed to only win for three days; everything else is gravy. If Kick-Ass or The Losers mattered to mainstream audiences, there wouldn't be room in the top five for Furry Vengeance, and as it is, it will still have trouble breaking through. Of course, nobody expected How to Train Your Dragon to go all Avatar and win the box office in its fifth weekend, but now that that's the reality, Vengeance and its dreadful reviews probably won't pull too much audience away from Dragons, which still has enough momentum to finish in second place this weekend. The Top Five:
1 - A Nightmare on Elm Street ($33 million)
2 - How to Train Your Dragon ($11.5 million)
3 - The Back-Up Plan ($7.5 million)
4 - Date Night ($6.5 million)
5 - Furry Vengeance ($5.5 million)

Comments

[Vince]

Nightmare is getting horrendous reviews. I mean, HORRENDOUS reviews. I really wanted it to be good, but jeez, it hasn't even hit double digits at Rotten Tomatoes yet.

With that said, I imagine a big opening and a HUGE drop next week. This movie won't break $60 million in domestic sales unless it opens above $40 million, and even Friday the 13th had trouble hitting that number last year.