Two days ago Indiewire‘s Tom Brueggeman posted a pep-rally piece called “7 Reasons Why Booksmart May Turn Out to Be a Box-Office Hit.” Part of the idea was that after last weekend’s underwhelming opening on 25905 screens (a three-day and four-day tally of $6,933,620 and $8,701,363, respectively) that Booksmart might rally its way to $15 million by tonight.
“A typical studio film with a second weekend like this would soon disappear,” Brueggeman reasoned, “but [Booksmart] should have longer legs based on strong word of mouth. So $25 million looks like a plausible final result.”
I can’t find any Booksmart box-office figures for Saturday, 6.1. It’s now 3:45 am in Los Angeles or 12:45 pm in Paris. Monday morning update: Booksmart wound up doing $3,328,648 over the weekend, which repped a -52% drop from last weekend. It now stands at $14,366,831. As it will lose tons of theatres next weekend, it’ll be lucky to hit $20M at the end of the day.
Yesterday Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro reported that Olivia Wilde‘s indie comedy was “having a solid hold in weekend 2″ with “$4M [earned] as of this point in time, or -42% [from last weekend] for a running total of $15M.”
On the other hand Forbes‘ Scott Mendelson reported that Booksmart was looking at a likely $3.7 million (-47%) weekend. That’ll give Annapurna and United Artist Releasing’s acclaimed teen comedy a mediocre $14.74 million ten-day total. Yes, this will be a cult favorite in the years to come, but the deluge of online ink afforded to this one didn’t move the needle one bit. It rarely does.”
Translation: Joe and Jane Popcorn have basically decided to wait for streaming, if that.
It appears at this stage as if Booksmart will be lucky to crest $20 million, but we’ll see. For what it’s worth I’m very sorry. When I saw it this UA/Annapurna release in mid April I told myself “yes, this has it…this will connect…not as big as Superbad but it’ll at least hit $30 million or thereabouts…a major indie comedy.”
In a 5.30 N.Y. Times piece titled “The Booksmart Conundrum: Are Women Not Allowed to Fail?“, Cara Buckley offered a positive assessment from Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock, at least as far as Wilde is concerned.
“This is exactly the kind of movie that makes your career,” Bock told Buckley. “All the right people are loving it. Critics are loving it. Studio executives are loving it. This is the kind of film they want in their catalog.” Bock added that he wouldn’t be surprised if Wilde “was asked to direct a Disney or Marvel film.”
Oh, dear God…they want me to direct a Disney or a Marvel film! My destiny has been fulfilled!
