Box Office Predictions April 18-20: Transcendent Bears are in a Haunted House in Heaven… For Real

Are my titles stupid or clever? Maybe they’re funny because they’re stupid. Anyway, onto the brief article. I’ve found it hard to write these because sometimes I like to save discussions of the film (like what I thought it might be like) for my reviews. I find it’s easier to write introductions that way, when I keep the writing about the film brief in these articles. But I might skip two of these movies, anyway. Bears is a home video or online viewing for me (or altogether skip) while I’m not decided on A Haunted House 2. I might just skip that altogether or watch it at a cheap theatre. Oh yeah, the article. My train of thought goes all over the place…

Heaven is For Real got an early start on the other three releases this Easter by being released on Wednesday. The film is about the true story of a boy who has a near-death experience, and claims to have seen Heaven. It looks like a film that I’ll enjoy because I think the idea of heaven is comforting. I have found myself mocking the title, however. Personally, I think “Heaven is Real” would work just fine and get the point across just as well. Heaven is for Real sounds a bit too “street-talky,” because of sayings like for real, man. Haha. Do you know what I mean? But perhaps Heaven is Real sounds too matter-of-factly for some people. Anyway, other films similar to this open at $11.88 million. I think this will do well over its five-day span, even if it might struggle to make Son of God‘s $25.6 million, a number it made in three days. I’m predicting $25 million for the five-day frame.

Bears is Disneynature’s latest documentary, after Oceans, African Cats and Chimpanzee. It’s getting released to 1720 locations this weekend, all other three of Disneynature’s films. Though, I don’t think it will make more than Chimp. It seems like this will land somewhere between $10.6 (Chimp‘s number) and $6 (Cat‘s number) million. My prediction is $7.8 million, because of a crowded market. It just seems to me that there are better family-friendly options.

A Haunted House 2 is coming out 15 months after the success of the first one (unseen by me) which made $60 million worldwide on a $2.5 million budget. The budget for this one is $3 million. The first film made $18.1 in its opening, going on to gross $40 million domestically. Maybe the film’s 5.0 IMDb score is an indication that this film will muster considerably lower numbers. Maybe it will go down to Scary Movie 5‘s $14.2 million. I can only dream. Films similar to this open at $21.6 million. Some people still like their spoof films, it seems – but the market for them is declining. The Starving Games only got released to 10 theatres (!) domestically, and made most of its money (about $3.7 million) in foreign markets. My prediction for this is $13.8 million.

Wally Pfister, cinematographer for many of Christopher Nolan’s films (only excluding 1997’s Following and the upcoming Interstellar), is in the director’s chair for this weekend’s Transcendence. I’ve been anticipating it, but I’ve brought my expectations down considerably after negative reviews. I saw it a few hours ago, I came away disappointed. I’ll tell you why in my review which I’ll be posting on the weekend. Anyway, similar films open at $32.7 million. I think this will have troubles cracking $30 million. I think this is going to numbers around After Earth  ($27.5M) and Elysium ($29.8M). I’m going to predict this at $28.5 million.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

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