Disney was arguably hoping this one would be the proverbial Jules and Julia or Hope Springs of summer 2013. The Helen Mirren foodie drama is set to earn around $10m over its debut weekend, which isn't terrible for the $22m Lasse Hallstrom picture. The Hundred-Foot Journey, from Walt Disney, earned $3.65m on is opening day. The film should end the weekend with around $17m, which isn't remotely shabby considering what a low-profile release it is. The $50 million New Line Cinema/Village Roadshow tornado drama, positioned as a found footage Twister for the YouTube era, earned a relatively solid $6.5m on its opening day, including $800k worth of Thursday previews. The next biggest debut was Warner Bros.' ( Time Warner, Inc.) Into the Storm. There were three other wide releases this weekend. The film played 61% male and 55% over-25 years old. Still, it was a pretty terrific campaign, certainly out in full force via various tie-ins (Pizza Hut, Pringles, etc.) and cross-promotions, but it was able to saturate the demographics and make everyone aware of the film without blatantly revealing much of the film's plot or visual beats. Paramount knew the characters are iconic enough to drive the curious, the fanatic, and the general movie goer into the theater with the same indifference to critical notices that drove Transformers 4to a $100m debut. The only "flaw," is that the film needlessly ended up with a PG-13, as the picture could have played even stronger to even younger children with a mostly-appropriate PG rating. Other than that, it was just a few TV spots and a well-timed "Shell Shocked" rap video that brought back nostalgic memories (and thus free advertising surrounding the new film) for Vanilla Ice " Go Ninja, Go!" rap video for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Oozeback in 1991. Then they waited, not dropping another wholly new trailer until the end of June right in time to be attached to their own Transformers: Age of Extinction, guaranteeing that every single ticket-buyer to Michael Bay's fourth robot-smashing adventure would see the second TMNT trailer. Paramount also deserves kudos for a relatively restrained and exquisitely timed campaign. They dropped the first teaser on the opening weekend of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, guaranteeing that most of the $95 million-worth of ticket buyers saw the teaser to the upcoming TMNT movie. They didn't respond to critics and pundits decrying Michael Bay as the ruiner of childhoods, the weird new designs, or who was or wasn't playing Shredder and if the turtles were or were not aliens. Paramount knew that the vast majority of moviegoers (and in this case younger moviegoers who discovered the title characters through the newest animated incarnation) weren't going to care about that stuff, even if a clearly "tinkered and re-shot in post production" final product implies that someone did. What was Paramount's marketing strategy? No Fear. But either way this is a dynamite debut weekend for a project that was the object of scorn from the moment of its inception. 2.5x gives the film a robust $64m while 2.75x gives the film a somewhat insane $70m for the frame. The big question for the weekend is how much the film plays like a kid-centric hit (with really strong Saturday matinee business and thus a higher multiplier) or a general hit (with the now standard 2.5x multiplier).
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