Your Complete Weekend Box Office Tracking, Predictions, & Analysis (07.14.16)

	The Secret Life of Pets	$56 million
	Ghostbusters	$52 million
	The Legend of Tarzan	$11.5 million
	Finding Dory	$11 million
	Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates	$7 million

The time has finally arrived: Paul Feig’s new Ghostbusters reboot bows in theaters this weekend, and people across the board are waiting on tenterhooks to see where its box office numbers will fall. Plenty of reviews are in for the film, and they’re trending mostly positive. The movie has been receiving good word of mouth, which should help it as well. Sony Pictures, who is distributing it, has been tracking the film around a $40-50 million opening, but with all the talk about the reboot, more people than expected might go to see it, even if only out of sheer curiosity.

While the film has been receiving negative backlash since it was first announced, the group that’s adamant about not seeing it (and even protesting it) is relatively small when compared with the rest of the population who will let normal factors like reviews, word of mouth, and their own opinion of sci-fi comedies determine whether or not they go see it. There’s also a chance that as audiences see it and begin to talk about it, its box office will fluctuate up and down as people who were once on the fence decide to go see it or not. A similar movie to look at is last year’s Mad Max: Fury Road, which also received backlash for similar reasons, and yet came out on top critically (although admittedly had a mixed box office domestically, making a total of $153 million on a $150 million budget, but made up for that with its $224 million international box office).

Ultimately, Ghostbusters has a lot of buzz around it and that should get people into theaters to see it. And on a budget of $144 million, Sony is hoping for audiences to err on the side of curiosity rather than wariness. Plus it would be nice to continue to prove that female-led comedies (and films in general) doing well is not a fluke.

Yet even if the paranormal flick performs better than expected, it won’t be enough to de-throne The Secret Life of Pets. Along with Pixar’s Finding Dory, these two animal-based animated films have done a lot to save a lackluster summer box office (together they’ve made about $560 million domestically). Illumination’s original family film is tracking to drop somewhere in the 50% range from its incredible $104 million opening. While unlikely (although after last weekend, unlikely could become the new norm), what could push Ghostbusters ahead of Pets is if parents decide to take their kids to the former, since they’ve already seen Finding Dory, The BFG, or Pets. However, animated family films are better known for having smaller drops weekend to weekend (around the 45% range) as opposed to big blockbusters (55% range), so Pets likely won’t see that dramatic of a drop. Furthermore, Pets will remain in a larger number of theaters than Ghostbusters will debut in, so basically, it’ll be up to Ghostbusters performing well, rather than Pets dropping too much.

Third and fourth place will be a toss-up between The Legend of Tarzan and Finding Dory, both of which are still in a high number of theaters this weekend (about 3,500 each). Pixar has been earning more day-to-day this week, but Tarzan has been out for a shorter amount of time, which means less people overall have had the chance to see it and might use this weekend to do so. Tarzan has also been performing better than expected week-to-week, and that should continue this weekend. However, it’s worth noting that for how much longer Dory has been out in theaters compared to Tarzan, the fact that it’s still keeping up with the Warner Bros. man-ape film is impressive (and furthers the fact that family movies perform better in the long-term).

	Opening Weekend	Current Gross	Facebook Likes	Tweets
The Secret Life of Pets	$104.352 million	$142.198 million	2,187,238	91,209
Ghostbusters	N/A	N/A	2,937,055	450,668
The Legend of Tarzan	$38.527 million	$89.826 million	494,940	22,211
Finding Dory	$135.060 million	$431.869 million	2,789,584	119,560
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates	$16.628 million	$22.319 million	110,448	23,445

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates will bring up the rear of fifth place. Like several other films that have performed better than expected this summer, the R-rated comedy had a decent haul last weekend, but that will definitely drop over the next few days. Comedies, especially raunchier ones, don’t have the longest shelf-life when it comes to theaters and box office and because of the mixed to negative reviews for this film, it likely won’t have the biggest future. Central Intelligence has been something of the exception, whose box office has dropped in the 40 and 30 percentile range week-to-week, but its more “wholesome” comedy and better reviews, as well as the draw of actors like Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, have allowed it to flourish more.

That movie will most likely drop to seventh place, after The Purge: Election Year, which has made a respectable $63 million so far on a $10 million budget. While not receiving the best reviews, audiences get excited about franchises like The Purge, which push things to the limit and provide exhilarating and dangerous entertainment. It will be interesting to compare this franchise’s box office to Nerve, which has a similar concept in terms of danger and wildness about it, and is set to open in theaters on July 27. Central Intelligence is well into the $100 million range, raking in $111 million so far on a $50 million budget.

	Rotten Tomatoes			IMDb		Metacritic
	Critics	Users	# of Ratings	Stars	# of Ratings
The Secret Life of Pets	74%	68%	47,503	6.8	8,325	61
Ghostbusters	75%	N/A	157	4.1	13,546	61
The Legend of Tarzan	36%	70%	43,955	6.9	17,296	44
Finding Dory	95%	89%	153,596	7.9	39,890	77
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates	40%	68%	17,763	6.5	3,294	51

The other new movie that’s opening this week, Broad Green Pictures’ The Infiltrator, which stars Bryan Cranston, is trending well with a 62% on Rotten Tomatoes so far, but as a smaller film that’s only opening in 1,600 theaters, it won’t make that dramatic of a splash. It will likely land in the $4-5 million range, but depending on if its theater count increases or decreases over the coming weeks, it could continue to do well. Bryan Cranston is also a favorite, and an actor audiences like to see. Rounding out the top ten will be Disney’s The BFG and Fox’s Independence Day: Resurgence, which have made $42 million and $94 million, respectively. They are also both dropping in the amount of theaters where they’ll be screened, so declines are natural.

In the coming weeks, we’ll see another animated family film hit (Ice Age: Collision Course), as well as the comeback of another franchise which has been plagued by various things recently (Star Trek Beyond), and they’ll both make impressions on the box office charts. But it will be the end of the summer that will likely make the biggest impact, with Warner Bros.’ Suicide Squad trending for a $125 million opening weekend already, and it doesn’t even come out until August 5.

(Sources: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com, rottentomatoes.com, imdb.com, metacritic.com. Tweets represent figures for this week only. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed. Tracking Board does not report Rotten Tomatoes user ratings for movies that have not yet seen wide release.)

Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor