Practical Magic 2 heads for a $40m opening despite 36% reviews
Warner Bros. took $4.7 million in Thursday previews for a sequel to a 1998 film that made less than $50 million in North America across its whole run.
Practical Magic 2 took $4.7 million in Thursday previews, World of Reel reported, and is now expected to open around $40 million in North America.
Warner Bros. had been guiding lower. The studio's own projection was $30 million to $35 million over four days, with independent trackers reaching for $40 million, according to TheWrap. The reported budget sits between $75 million and $78 million.
That is a lot of confidence in a film sitting at 36 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.
The maths nobody at the studio says out loud
The original Practical Magic was not a hit. It opened to $13.1 million in October 1998, finished with $46.7 million in North America and $94.4 million worldwide against a $60 million budget, and took a B-minus CinemaScore from the people who did turn up.
Then it went to cable and DVD and became something the box office never measured. Warner Bros. is not betting on a 1998 film. It is betting on 28 years of Sunday afternoons.
Susanne Bier directs, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman return as the Owens sisters, and the marketing has aimed squarely at the women who made the first film a fixture. If the opening lands near $40 million, the sequel will have out-grossed the original's entire domestic run inside a fortnight.
What else is in the market
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has been holding the top spot and is expected to lose it this weekend.
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey keeps going. It has passed $591 million in North America, per The Numbers, and cleared $1.5 billion worldwide last month, Nolan's first film to reach a billion since The Dark Knight Rises, Variety reported.
Disney's Oasis documentary, Don't Look Back in Anger, is forecast to take $5 million to $7 million from about 1,200 sites, most of them IMAX screens.
The part worth watching
Reviews and openings stopped agreeing years ago. What they still predict is the second weekend, where a 36 per cent film with an affectionate audience behaves very differently from a 36 per cent film without one.
Sunday's estimates will give the first number. Next Sunday gives the honest one.
Reporting this piece draws on
The writer
Nell Fairweather — The lead news file and the weekly column: studio decisions, the numbers underneath them, and what they cost the people who have to live with them.
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