UPDATED, 3:53 PM: With strong matinee tallies coming in for the Tom Hanks-starring Sully, industry observers are betting that the film about the miracle on the Hudson may come in around $12M today and around $30M to $33M for the three-day weekend for Warner Bros./Village Roadshow. Sony’s When the Bough Breaks is heading toward about $7M tonight with a possible low-to-mid $20M weekend, depending on Sunday’s haul. Meanwhile Lionsgate’s The Wild Life and Relativity’s The Disappointments Room are mere blips today. Wild Life might end up with a $3M weekend while Disappointment’s may not even break $1M.
PREVIOUSLY, 7:25 AM: Sully, Tom Hanks and Clint Eastwood’s tribute to a true American hero, flew in this morning and landed with a staggering $1.35M from yesterday on about 2,900 screens for Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow, which is co-producing and financing with the studio.
The gross surpasses all of its comps by far: the Tom Hanks-starring Bridge of Spies last year in mid-October opened to $600K on Thursday in 2,387 runs before it went onto grab $15.37M on 2,811 runs for its three-day. The differences are that Sully has higher interest from both older females and males (overall) than Bridge of Spies. Another comp picture, the Hanks-starring Captain Phillips opened to $600K in late nights in 2013 before grossing $25.7M during its opening weekend in October. Sony opened Phillips wide in 3,143 theaters.
We are still expecting a weekend in the mid-$20Ms.
Sully has more runs than either of those films. Five or six years ago, Sully would have been designated a mid-October release but with all of the films in the marketplace this year — and it’s crammed — September has now become a vital time to release. Usually, distributors don’t want to touch the weekend after Labor Day because of the general lack of movie going.
But this year, four new pictures are coming into this weekend. Of all the new releases — When the Bough Breaks (Sony), The Wild Life (Lionsgate), The Disappointments Room (Relativity)– Sully definitely has had the highest awareness by far.
The other three films opening did not release into theaters last night. Sully‘s Thursday night grosses are folded into the Friday number (as always) so should have a very good day and night. These adult-demo films tend to draw a nice multiple and the reviews on the picture are mostly positive boosted by critical acclaim from Telluride so this picture could have pretty strong legs.
In terms of social media reach, Sully has the strongest video views (in the 15K daily viewing range and an earned/owned ratio of 8:1) of any of the new releases. The ripped-from-the-headlines film is about Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger’s water landing on the Hudson River in January of 2009 after geese flew into the engines of the commercial airliner disabling it. The film is flexing its muscle across the board with a smu (social media universe) of 84.9M. Breaking it down, Sully has 41.9M Facebook fans, 20.3M Twitter followers, 2.4M Instagram followers and over 20.3M YouTube views.
What’s interesting about his film, says RelishMix who compiles the data every week for Deadline, is that Hanks and Eastwood are dutifully participating in the film’s traditional press tour with Q&A’s – but they are not social at all.
#Sully and SullyMovie leads the charge this week with over 6K hashtags across Twitter and Instagram while #ItAllWentWrong and #Whentheboughbreaks have closer to 4K, which is still good for an opening week. The Disappointments Room did not have enough activity to even track.
