After trailing behind Real Steel on the weekend and on Monday, Footloose topped the North American box-office chart for three days in a row. Its box-office rule, however, is already over, as Paranormal Activity 3 opened with an estimated $8 million at Thursday midnight screenings at 2,200 locations, according to Box Office Mojo. [Photo: Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough in Footloose.]
As BOM’s Ray Subers remarks, that’s considerably better than Paranormal Activity 2’s $6.3m at 1,800 sites last year. Paranormal Activity 2 went on to gross $84.75 million in the US/Canada and $177.51 million worldwide. The original Paranormal Activity collected $193.35 million worldwide.
Including Thursday midnight’s box-office take, Paranormal Activity 3 is expected to take in approximately $40 million this weekend — that would be more than any other movie at the North American box office since Rise of the Planet of the Apes on the first weekend of August. That is also proof that, as pundits everywhere affirm, audiences want original, quality movies and storylines.
Due to a lack of both originality and quality — one assumes — none of this weekend’s other new releases is supposed to do good business. Distributed by Summit Entertainment, Paul W.S. Anderson’s 3D version of The Three Musketeers is expected to land at no. 2, with a box-office take in the low teens. One of the film’s leads, Anderson’s Resident Evil collaborator Mila Jovovich, has taken to Twitter to plug the film, chastising Summit for not doing enough to promote it. Despite the prestigious cast, reviews have been mostly scathing. The Three Musketeers stars Logan Lerman, Christoph Waltz, Matthew MacFadyen, Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans, Mads Mikkelsen, James Corden, Orlando Bloom, and Juno Temple.
Directed by Oliver Parker, and starring Rowan Atkinson, Johnny English Reborn should open between $7-8m. The Johnny English sequel has already earned $85m abroad. Back in 2003, Johnny English raked in $28.08m in North America and $132.5m overseas. (Figures not adjusted for inflation.)
As for Tim Chambers‘ The Mighty Macs, which features the likes of David Boreanaz, Ellen Burstyn, and Carla Gugino, it will likely bomb with less than $3m at 975 locations. In fact, the Christian-themed sports drama could possibly end up collecting as little as a heathenish $1m.
For the record, Footloose, directed by Craig Brewer, and starring Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough, Dennis Quaid, and Andie McDowell, has remained above the $1m-per-day mark throughout the week. Real Steel fell slightly below that mark for the first time on Wednesday (Day 13). Directed by Shawn Levy, the Disney release stars Hugh Jackman, Dakota Goyo, and Evangeline Lilly. Footloose has raked in $20m to date; Real Steel’s cume stands at $55.9m.
Rounding out the top five on Thursday were George Clooney-Ryan Gosling’s The Ides of March ($24.25m cume), Matthijs van Heijningen Jr-Joel Edgerton’s The Thing ($10.97m cume), and Bennett Miller-Brad Pitt’s Moneyball ($59.65m cume).
After seven days out, the Steve Martin-Jack Black-Owen Wilson comedy The Big Year has yet to reach $5m. The Devil Wears Prada’s David Frankel directed.
Footloose image: K. C. Bailey / Paramount Pictures.