Thursday Box Office: 'Gravity' Grosses $1.4m, Still Set For $40m Weekend

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The first numbers are in for Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. The $80 millionSandra Bullock/George Clooneyspace thriller earned $1.4 million in Thursday shows, which generally started at 10:00pm last night.  Where the film goes from here is as always somewhat of an open question, but there remains two distinct possibilities.  Whether Gravity ends up with $30 million or $40 million or above is merely a question of how front-loaded the film happened to be last night.

As a general rule, films that are somewhat front-loaded and/or heavily-anticipated franchise titles (think the first Thor) tend to do about 5-6% of their opening weekend on Thursday (be it advance night showings on the old-school midnight screening).  As such, if Gravity falls into that category, expect an opening weekend of over/under $30 million. That would be no defeat, even coming in under the projected $40 million predictions, as I can’t imagine word of mouth won’t be almost as stellar as the initial reviews. That’s the worst case scenario, but the best case scenario is that it plays like an old-school blockbuster over the weekend.

As another general rule, films that are anticipated enough to justify advance-night screenings but not obsessively anticipated tend to do around 4% of their business on Thursday.  In this case think Inception or Avatar. With its adult movie stars and strong buzz for older moviegoers as well as younger ones, it would be logical to presume that the major bulk of its audience decided to merely wait for a convenient Friday or Saturday showtime.  If Gravity plays like such a film, and I’m assuming it will, and with less front-loading due to its mere 90 minute running time, expect an opening weekend of $35-$40 million.

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