April's relatively quiet release schedule means that a lot is hinging upon the success of one or two films. Arguably the most important one of those will be Oblivion. It's a movie not quite positioned as a summer release but one that could easily continue making the case that April will eventually become "the new May".
Oblivion has some work to do, though. Four weeks out from release, its Twitter activity is alarmingly slow. This may be attributable to the fact that it is between promotional cycles. Still, the Tom Cruise-led science fiction title pulled 603 tweets over the last five days. While that is 108 percent ahead of Jack Reacher's activity during the same time, it pales in comparison to similar titles.
Director Antoine Fuqua's Olympus Has Fallen exceeded all expectations this past weekend with an impressive $30.5 million opening frame (pending actual results later today). That bested the director's previous best opening of $22.6 million from 2001's Training Day, but more importantly it represents the best opening from an action film in 2013 so far.
Beyond that, Olympus smashed distributor FilmDistrict's previous best opening weekend (Red Dawn's $14.3 million in November). The film is locked to become both Fuqua's and FilmDistrict's highest grossing domestic release yet.
Saturday Update: Spring Breakers has added more than 30,000 Facebook likes since early Friday morning, push its total past 430,000. The A24 release inspired 3,365 tweets on Friday with 2:1 positive:negative ratio.
Early reports indicate that the film won't even hit $5 million this weekend. We will release an official projection this morning.
Friday Update: Spring Breakers has added more than 55,000 likes on Facebook since last Friday. It's total could hit 400,000 after this weekend. The controversial flick inspired 1,931 tweets with a 2:1 positive:negative ratio on Thursday, and our tally is already up to 1,611 for today.
Star Trek Into Darkness continued to dominate interests as the film debuted a short new teaser last week ahead of the full international trailer yesterday. Behind that movie, Iron Man 3 held on to #2 yet again while Man of Steel lost some ground in voting but managed to stay just barely ahead of Thor: The Dark World (which moved up one spot to fourth place).
The biggest moves of the week came from Oblivion and The Hangover Part III. As the former's April release approaches, buzz is slowly building and the result was a four-spot leap to #7. Meanwhile, May's third Hangover jumped three positions to crack the top ten for the first time.
Writer/Director Brian Helgeland's 42 is scheduled to open on Friday, April 12 (opposite Scary Movie 5) and despite the decidedly rough history of baseball-themed movies at the box office, the film is--forgive the pun--knocking it out of the park across social network metrics.
From March 15-19, 42 was responsible for 8,454 tweets with a stunning 54.8 positive-to-negative ratio. The Twitter activity was 122.4 percent higher than Moneyball during the same point in its 2011 release cycle and a whopping 444.7 percent ahead of last year's Trouble with the Curve. In fact, it was the fifth most talked-about movie on Twitter yesterday (March 20).
Analysis: Why 'Iron Man', 'Trek', 'Fast', & 'Hangover' Mean May 2013 Doesn't Need Another 'Avengers'
Benchmarks are hard to live up to. The new standard for a May blockbuster was birthed last year when Marvel's The Avengers broke a litany of box office barriers.
Now, 2013's lucrative summer season is approaching with some among the industry--and its fans--skeptical that this May can't measure up to last year's performance.
They're wrong.
Before we begin to tell you why, keep one thing in mind: quality is ultimately king. If audiences aren't happy with the product they're given, they won't keep showing up after big opening weekends. They'll opt to catch up on Redbox titles and Netflix queues, or simply forego movies completely to enjoy the seasonal air.
Identity Thief grabbed another $1.4 million domestically on Friday to become director Seth Gordon's highest grossing stateside release with $120.59 million through 36 days of release.
After his highly praised debut feature (the documentary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters), Gordon went on to send the comedies Four Christmases and Horrible Bosses to $120.2 million and $117.5 million, respectively.
Overall, Identity Thief still has some work ahead to catch up with those titles as its estimated $126.1 million global take (overseas figures last updated on Monday) trails Bosses' $209.8 million and Christmases' $163.7 million figures.
