The weekend after Thanksgiving is typically a quiet one for the nation’s box office, and this year, only one new release is opening wide. That would be Out of the Furnace, a gritty, bleak revenge drama starring the gritty, bleak Batman, Christian Bale, as well as Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, and Woody Harrelson. Expectations aren’t quite as dour as the film’s subject matter, location and production stills, but they’re not overly hopeful. To compare, Killing Them Softly was in the same position this time last year, as a new release bowing after the holiday weekend. It boasted a big movie star, Brad Pitt, but failed to leverage the actor’s perceived wide appeal. Softly opened to $6.8 million. Furnace isn’t tracking great with critics, either, (52% rotten on infallible taste barometer Rotten Tomatoes), though it’ll likely fare better than Brad’s failed bet. Screening in 2,101 theatres, odds are, it’ll earn around $10 million.
That kind of haul would likely place it at No. 3, behind last weekend’s reigning champions Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. General consensus has Games finally slipping from the top slot, to the gain of family friendly Frozen. This will be the action flick's third weekend in theatres, while Frozen, now in its sophomore outing, has youth and a bit more novelty on its side. Comparable franchise series Twilight and Harry Potter both experienced a significant downturn in sales over this same weekend, on average dropping about 60%. Games, however, has consistently done better business than either of its blockbuster peers, meaning its dip shouldn’t be quite as severe - probably about 50%. Both the princess and the provocateur (there’s a college term paper for you) should earn figures in the mid-to-high $30 million range, with Frozen gaining the edge.
Art-house aficionados have been edge-of-their-seats with anticipation over the new Coen brothers’ film, Inside Llewyn Davis, opening in four locations in LA and New York today. The film, allegedly inspired by the experiences of folk singer Dave Van Ronk in 1960’s Greenwich Village, has been earning rave reviews (95% fresh on RT). Not to mention, its hooky, ridiculous protest song “Please Mr. Kennedy” has steadily been making its viral way into the hearts, and that part of your brain that’s like fly paper to a catchy tune, for a few days now. It doesn’t have the foot-tapping appeal of a “Man of Constant Sorrow,” from the brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? But it does have “Girls” actor Adam Driver as a real-life space cowboy. Between the siblings’ cachet, the film’s positive buzz, and the below clip, Davis should significantly out-earn its predecessor, A Serious Man, which opened to $41,890 in 2009.
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