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Friday Box Office: 'Angry Birds' Soars To $11M, 'Neighbors 2' Snags $8M, 'Nice Guys' Finishes Fourth

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As expected, Columbia/ Sony's  The Angry Birds Movie flew to the top of the Friday box office charts yesterday. Rovio Animation's $73 million animated feature earned $11 million yesterday, besting Captain America: Civil War (around $8.75m for the day). That puts it right in the upper-tier comfort zone for Sony’s recent animated output, although it’s not technically part of Sony Animation, and the studio is only getting a distribution fee. Nonetheless, Sony sold this one to hell and high water and the effort seems to have mostly paid off.

The movie, of course, benefited from the massive popularity and awareness of its source material. And, with a "hearty" 42% on Rotten Tomatoes, it stands as the (unless I missed one) the second-best reviewed video game movie of all time, behind Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which nabbed a whopping 44%. So, congrats? More importantly, it earned an average score of 4.9/10, which is basically the equivalent of “Eh, that's not too terrible” to most parents considering taking their kids to the kid-friendly and mostly entertaining trifle.

In terms of previous Sony opening Fridays, it’s third behind Hotel Transylvania 2 ($13.3 million) and The Smurfs ($13.2m). The Smurfs opened in August, but most of the Sony Animation films open when kids are still in school. We should be looking at a 3.6x weekend multiplier for an over/under $40m debut weekend. That will shockingly make it the second-biggest opening weekend for a video game movie ever, behind the $47 million debut of Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider back in 2001.

Unless it’s oddly frontloaded, and this pre-Memorial Day weekend frame is one of the best out there for summer legs, it may well pass Tomb Raider’s $131m domestic gross (again, from back in 2001 and in 2D) to become the biggest video game movie ever in America. The $336m worldwide total of Walt Disney ’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (on a $200m budget) is a way’s off, but the film is already at $90m worldwide as of yesterday.

The next opener of the weekend is frankly a disappointment. Universal/ Comcast Corp.’s Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising earned just $8.736 million on its first Friday. That’s a whopping 55% below the $19.574m opening Friday for the first Neighbors back in 2014. If the weekend plays out as did the first Seth Rogen/Rose Byrne/Zac Efron film, we’re looking at a $22m weekend. That’s a larger comedown for a comedy sequel than Ted 2. I wasn’t expecting as big of a weekend as the first film, but this is a bigger drop than I anticipated.

There is a long history of breakout comedies with sequels that didn’t remotely measure up to the first films. Addams’ Family Values and Wayne’s World 2 are two classic examples. Yes, you have original films that started small with “go nuts on opening weekend” sequels (Pitch Perfect 2, Austin Powers 2, Scream 2), but generally when the original goes big immediately (again, Ted comes to mind), then it’s only a question of how far down the next installment will drop. 22 Jump Street is arguably an anomoly. Still, with good buzz and strong reviews, this was a surprise.

To be fair, the original film was the buzzy movie of that weekend, facing off against a $35 million second weekend for Amazing Spider-Man 2 and having a strong narrative of being the low-budget comedy that bested a falling Peter Parker. This time, it’s an estimated $32m third weekend for Captain America: Civil War, $39m weekend for Angry Birds and $11 million weekend for The Nice Guys all chipping away at the audience. Plus, it is no longer the big man on campus, which makes me wonder if an opening last weekend (the same frame where the first debuted) might have helped.

The good news is that the sequel still cost only $35 million, a number that it will surpass this weekend with $22m overseas already in the tank. It’s no flop, as it’s going to make at least $55m domestic (if it falls like Ted 2) and presumably another $55m+ overseas. So it’s still going to at least triple its budget in theatrical alone, and that’s presuming no legs and no post-opening buzz. If Universal can keep the movie in theaters and word spreads about the genuinely funny (and openly progressive) comedy gem, well, I expect a small-ish drop next weekend.

The last major release on Friday was The Nice Guys. This Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. picture comes from Joel Silver and Rat-Pac Dune Entertainment and is something in the way of counterprogramming for the summer. Now it says a lot that a Joel Silver-produced action comedy starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe counts as counterprogramming, but that’s the way of the world in 2016. Anyway, the terrific (and terrifically reviewed) Shane Black film earned $3.88 million yesterday in 2,865 theaters, good for fourth place, hence the headline. That points towards an $11m weekend.

That’s not remarkable (the film cost $50 million to produce), but we can all cross our fingers and hope for legs. But if you're wondering how much or how little star power would-be movie stars like Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling have even in a well-reviewed vehicle, there you go. This perhaps should have been a December release, but I’m glad audiences have films like this alongside the blockbusters in the early summer months. Like Neighbors 2, I’m expecting a solid hold at least over Memorial Day weekend. There is a ton of solid adult-skewing content in the multiplexes right now, so all we can do is hope they each make enough to make them (respectively) worthy investments amid the tentpoles.

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