Your Complete Weekend Box Office Tracking, Predictions, & Analysis

by: Madelyn Glymour | Contributor

	AMERICAN SNIPER	$40 million
	THE BOY NEXT DOOR	$16 million
	PADDINGTON	$10 million
	THE WEDDING RINGER	$9 million
	MORTDECAI	$8 million

This weekend’s box office is going to be successful almost entirely by virtue of American Sniper‘s colossal first week. The three new releases — The Boy Next Door, Mortdecai, and Strange Magic — are tracking positively lethargically, and none of the other entries in last weekend’s top five did well enough to retain much audience this week. American Sniper will once again take the weekend easily; I’ve predicted a 50 percent drop to $40 million, but with the dearth of interesting competition, it could easily go higher than that.

The other two holdovers from last week are likely to be The Wedding Ringer and Paddington. I’ve predicted a slightly less than 50 percent drop Paddington, which got favorable reviews that should help prevent audience flight, and a slightly higher than 50 percent drop for The Wedding Ringer, whose only comedy competition this week is the sickly Mortdecai. Notably, the kid-friendly Paddington has overtaken The Wedding Ringer this week, despite the fact that weekends tend to be the strongest times for family films.

	Opening Weekend	Current Gross	Facebook Likes	Tweets
AMERICAN SNIPER	$89.269 million	$128.116 million	1,063,483	1,295,720
THE BOY NEXT DOOR	N/A	N/A	285,982	31,901
PADDINGTON	$18.967 million	$27.068 million	563,145	–
THE WEDDING RINGER	$20.649 million	$26.901 million	407,395	53,320
MORTDECAI	N/A	N/A	99,116	35,793

That brings us to the three new releases. Of them, The Boy Next Door is likely to do the best, in part because its awareness numbers dwarf its competition, and in part because it’s the only non-family film this week, new or old, that caters to women. That should be enough to get it to second place over The Wedding Ringer.

Mortdecai has decent awareness, but anemic interest levels, and Johnny Depp hasn’t been carrying movies very well lately. (See: Transcendence, The Lone Ranger.) But last week’s #5, Taken 3, is shedding audience fast, so Depp’s comedy should be able to just barely edge it out for a spot in the top five. Not so for Strange Magic, George Lucas’ animated family adventure film. It’s unclear whether Strange Magic‘s failure is due to poor reviews or poor marketing, but either way, it’s unlikely to make much of an impact on the box office.

	Rotten Tomatoes			IMDb		Metacritic
	Critics	Users	# of Ratings	Stars	# of Ratings
AMERICAN SNIPER	74	89	83,325	7.7	51,137	72
THE BOY NEXT DOOR	17	N/A	12,893	4.9	200	32
PADDINGTON	98	87	24,438	7.6	8,430	77
THE WEDDING RINGER	33	77	21,231	6.8	1,746	34
MORTDECAI	6	N/A	17,269	5.5	432	19

(Sources: boxoffice.com, rottentomatoes.com, imdb.com, metacritic.com. Starred figures are estimates. 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.)