Saturday Update: “The Martian” Easily Repeats, “Pan” Disappoints

Business as usual.

With pretty much zero surprise, The Martian easily topped first on Friday with an estimated $10.75M. That gives it a weekend in the $35M range, which is a fantastic second weekend result. Word of mouth is obviously helping, and with a hold like this it seems like The Martian is en route to over $200M by the end of its run. If it plays out like Interstellar it will be just around $200M, but if it holds like Gravity that number will be around $265M. Realistically it will end with around $220M total, but for a movie about a guy trying to kill time in a lab for four years, that’s a pretty strong number.

The big new opener of the week, Pan, was, as expected, very disappointing. It took in just $5.2M on its opening day, for a weekend take of around $18M. In terms of other major fairy tale adaptations, it was less than a quarter of the opening days for Cinderella, Oz: The Great and Powerful, Maleficent or Alice in Wonderland. Granted that isn’t quite as low as early expectations, but it is by no means a good start. In fact, it’s pretty awful. If it plays similarly to Ender’s Game, it will end up with a domestic total in the $40M range. Overseas numbers weren’t solid either, and this will likely wind up being a massive write off for Warner. That $5.2M is actually smaller than the adjusted first Friday of the 2003 flop Peter Pan, which made about $5.6M for an adjusted domestic total of $65M. The next major film in this line is The Jungle Book, but that film is likely to do infinitely better for a number of reasons; one, the trailer has received over 17M views on YouTube as well as exploding on social media, and the story is much more beloved than Peter Pan. Not to mention, it looks like its source material, rather than some bizarre, drug fueled re imagining of a prequel.

Steve Jobs opened in four theaters to a phenomenal $175K on Friday, giving it a per theater average of $43,750. For the weekend it will likely top $400K, giving it one of the highest per theater averages ever for a live action film. Obviously interest in the film is very high, but this is a bit surprising given that it seemed like something that would play better to a mainstream audience. The film gets a very small expansion next weekend, followed by a nationwide release on the 24th. Only time will tell who is most interested in the film, but this is a great start either way. In fact, this debut is actually higher than that of Birdman, which also played at 4 theaters (probably the same ones) and averaged $33.9K on its opening day, which averaged over $100K at each theater in its opening weekend.

The Walk bombed on Friday with just $1.15M on its opening day of wide release. Turns out all of the interest was squeezed out last weekend during its IMAX release, especially given the mass amounts of competition facing it right now. The Walk is what I like to call a “lost in the shuffle” film, something that got good reviews and probably isn’t all that bad, but couldn’t find an audience and was released at the wrong time. With this opening day, it’s likely going to open with around $2-$3M for the weekend.