Your Complete Weekend Box Office Tracking, Predictions, & Analysis (03.12.15)

	CINDERELLA	$60 million
	RUN ALL NIGHT	$13 million
	FOCUS	$6 million
	KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE	$5.5 million
	THE SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL	$5 million

The big news of the weekend is Kenneth Branagh’s live-action Cinderella. With excellent interest numbers among women, outstanding awareness, and a pervasive marketing campaign, it’s poised to earn north of $60 million. That would make it the highest earner since Fifty Shades of Grey hit last month, and while Fifty Shades made more upfront, Cinderella, with its strong reviews and family-friendly premise, should have more staying power — even considering the upcoming competition from Insurgent. If I were you, I’d get used to seeing it in the top five.

The forecast isn’t quite so sunny for the weekend’s other new release, the Liam Neeson-starrer Run All Night. Projections are putting it between $12 and $15 million. I don’t know exactly what the movie’s production budget is, but a little research indicates that the average for a Liam Neeson thriller is in the low double-digits, so a $13 million opening might not be too bad; if it doesn’t drop too much and does well in foreign markets, it could certainly make back its production and marketing budgets, at least.

	Opening Weekend	Current Gross	Facebook Likes	Tweets
CINDERELLA	N/A	N/A	13,704,146	53,817
RUN ALL NIGHT	N/A	N/A	55,355	10,087
CHAPPIE	$13.347 million	$15.842 million	292,020	59,736
FOCUS	$18.685 million	$36.568 million	252,925	39,270
KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE	$36.206 million	$99.698 million	424,880	69,982

Once again, this week, there’s a steep drop before we get to our returning champions. Chappie, going into its second week, and Focus, going into its third, have a bit of a head-start, having been the top two last week; the statistical realities of audience retention should ensure that they hold on to third and fourth place, respectively.

 Kingsman and Marigold, on the other hand, were in a virtual tie last week, with Marigold edging out Kingsman by a mere $200,000. Obviously, when you get down to differences as small as that, there’s a lot of guesswork involved, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Kingsman overtake Marigold. Kingsman is going into its fifth week, and long-lasting movies tend to have small audience loss late in their runs, while Marigold will be experiencing its first big drop after opening weekend. No matter what, expect them to be close.

	Rotten Tomatoes			IMDb		Metacritic
	Critics	Users	# of Ratings	Stars	# of Ratings
CINDERELLA	84	N/A	30,669	7.7	1,705	68
RUN ALL NIGHT	51	N/A	4,825	7.3	307	58
CHAPPIE	30	66	29,394	7.3	15,712	41
FOCUS	56	61	27,956	6.9	13,762	56
KINGSMAN: THE SECRET SERVICE	74	88	83,807	8.2	78,165	59

(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.)

By: Madelyn Glymour | Contributor