Box Office Prognosis: Pitch Perfect 2 Is A Box Office Home Run

Oh, wait, it’s not that kind of “pitch?”

This week at the box office, Pitch Perfect 2 hit the right note yet again with an excellent debut, and Mad Max: Fury Road was right on its tail with an equally grand first weekend.  Well I guess not “equally” exactly since there was a pretty substantial gap between the two films but, oh, whatever, they both did well okay?  Must this always be a competition?

Yes, yes it must, and Pitch Perfect 2 won the competition whole heartedly, grossing a terrific $70 million gross in the three day weekend.  This is a gigantic increase from the opening weekend of the first film back in 2012, where the original Pitch Perfect made just $14.8 million in its debut.  It went on to become a bit of a sleeper hit however, as it held on in the weeks to come to a final tally of $65 million — which, yes, is less than what the sequel made in its first three days alone.  That’s what I call a fucking success.

In its current trajectory, it’s actually kind of hard to predict what Pitch Perfect will end up doing; it will pass $100 million surely, but I feel this one will be heavily front-loaded, which could lead to a hard decrease in future weeks.  I think an end sum around $135 million is a safe bet, but who’s to say?  If word of mouth is strong enough, it could end up passing $150 million.

And similar things can be said of fellow newcomer Mad Max: Fury Road, which settled for second place this weekend, but still had a pretty darn good opening.  Yes some people are decrying the film a failure and lamenting the death of the franchise but, trust me, those people are completely wrong: a weird R-rated action movie making $45 million in its first weekend is a big success, and I actually feel like this one will be the opposite of Pitch Perfect 2 in that it will continue to make money in the weeks ahead as more people discover how great it is.  I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that it ultimately makes around the same amount of money that Pitch Perfect 2 will — so yeah, good weekend for both films!

Usually I cover the top five in this article but, to be quite honest, I don’t really feel like doing that this week, especially considering how late this article is going up.  So instead, I’ll end things with a look at the gross of Avengers: Age of Ultron, which came in third place this weekend and made $38.8 million.  That’s a 50% decrease than last weekend, and a domestic cume thus far of $372 million.  That makes it the number one film of the year so far (ahead of Furious 7), and puts it on track to finish its run around $500 million.  That’s less than what the first film made but, c’mon.  It’s still way more money than any of us will ever see in our lives.

Here’s the chart:

Box Office: May 19, 2015

Check back next week to see how well Disney’s Tomorrowland does!  Considering the Disney factor, I wouldn’t underestimate it.  See you then!

-Matthew