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Legend of Tarzan Box Office Results: $8.5M Friday, Projects to $23M thru Sunday

ERBDOM, Legend of Tarzan (Movie), Legend of Tarzan Box Office

UPDATE 2:30 PM FRIDAY.  This from Deadline Hollywood — first projections based on matinees back east.  Think of this as exit poll numbers.

Disney/Pixar’s Finding Dory is ruling No. 1 with an estimated $42M three-day and $52M four-day at 4,305. The sequel entered the weekend with $330.3M and is set to bank $13M today. That easily puts it past Minions ($336M), and by Monday, Dory will have beaten Despicable Me 2’s stateside take of $368M.

Disney/Walden Media’s Steven Spielberg movie The BFG and Warner Bros./Village Roadshow’s The Legend of Tarzan are wrestling for third. At 3,357 theaters,  BFG is looking at an estimated $8M today, Friday-Sunday take of $23M and a four-day of $28M. Tarzan at 3,561 is on track to make $8.5M today, $23M over Friday-Sunday and $27.5M by Monday.

UPDATE NOON FRIDAY:  Interesting comment from Deadline Hollywood:

 BFG has the best reviews of this weekend’s new titles with 73% fresh, while Legend of Tarzan is at 34% rotten. Despite that rip in Tarzan’s loincloth, general buzz around town is that the David Yates movie is pretty good. It wouldn’t be surprising to see another scenario this weekend where the audience reaction outshines critics’ poor word of mouth.

ORIGINAL POST 8AM FRIDAY:  The word is in.  Thursday night previews netted $2.25M for Tarzan, while Spielberg’s The BFG pulled in only $775,000.  Meanwhile Purge: Election Year pulled in $3.65M, winning the night and signaling that it will probably win the weekend if audiences like it.  But “winning the weekend” is not really the measure of success or failure.

What does this project out to for Legend of Tarzan?

I’m not going there just yet.   I will say that my nightmare was that LOT would pull in less than $1m on Thursday night, and that didn’t happen.  It performed respectably and there is nothing in the Thursday night outcome that would imply it will do worse than Low $30M range.    But I’m trying to root it on to $40M, which is the “victory” threshhold, given the budget and P&A costs.

Meanwhile — here are some interesting datapoints from Rotten Tomatoes.

Independence Day Resurgence
32% Critics Rating with 34% Audience “Liked it” Rating

Legend of Tarzan
34% Critics Rating with 69% Audience “Liked it” Rating

Purge Election Year
57% Critics Raating with 73% Audience “Liked it” Rating

The obvious anomaly in that data set is that LOT has a bigger disconnect between critics and audiences than the other films — and it seems that LOT not getting a lot of love from the critics will not translate into bad audience ratings, whereas with IDR both critics and audiences didn’t like it.

Legend of Tarzan is also holding well at 7.3 audience rating on IMDB.
Purge is 6.7
IDR is 5.7

6 comments

  • I really feel like this is going to be a movie driven by word of mouth, or maybe I should say it needs to be driven by word of mouth. I saw it last night. There were about 60 people in the IMAX theater, so I was disappointed there weren’t more people. However, when the movie ended there was clapping and I think those that attended enjoyed the movie.

    It was good movie, full of fun and adventure. Was it perfect…no, but it was entertaining and isn’t that what movies are all about.

    Here is a pretty interesting commentary and review of LoT. The reviewer discusses the marketing campaign and how that might have influenced the negative reviews. He then moves to his review, which is pretty good.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2016/07/01/review-legend-of-tarzan-is-wild-and-crazy-summer-popcorn-fun/#43e643437405

    • I saw it for a 2nd time today and I would say the theater wasn’t full by any means, but I thought it was fairly decent considering it was a 3:20 matinee. The make-up of the audience was couples, both young and older, and females, both young and older. Again, there was laughter in all the right places and a few claps at the end.

      Also, as I write this later Friday night, or early Saturday morning, RT continues to waver between 35 and 33, yet the audience has risen to 73.

      Btw, my 14 year-old niece really loved it — the movie has broad appeal and that makes me cautiously optimistic.

  • The Washington Post gave Tarzan a mixed review in the Style section– a short one back on page 3. They complained about the script and a jumble of different styles. But said in the end:

    ” But it’s the silly season of summer, when even a turbocharged “Tarzan” — especially one with the built-in disclaimer of “Legend” in the title — may be just what is needed to cut through the thicket of interchangeable action heroes. Like Lord Greystoke — Tarzan’s “civilized” name — the movie pays lip service to the modern world, while its heart is back in the old one.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-legend-of-tarzan-updated-ape-man-adventure-is-a-jungle-of-film-styles/2016/06/30/c6fd06e4-3ed4-11e6-84e8-1580c7db5275_story.html

    The paper usually features the big blockbuster openings in its Weekend supplement, and I expected to see LOT on the cover. But the paper said LOT was not available in time to get in. Was there a delay in releasing it to critics? I’ve got tickets for 4:30 but so far only five other seats have been reserved. Hopefully there will be more walk-ins, but without adequate publicity via the local press it’s kind of doubtful. But we shall see.

  • Good news about Thursday Night Previews box office.

    I am still waiting to see if positive Time review on Tarzan will be included on RT critics list. I find it odd not to be included (Time is one of the major contributors). Either my vision has deteriorated considerably or RT and Metacritic simply ignore it.

    What I find interesting and definitely informative is this article about an inspiration for the tribal men groups in the Legend of Tarzan movie. This is worth reading.

    http://www.bustle.com/articles/169901-the-tribal-men-in-legend-of-tarzan-could-draw-some-inspiration-from-real-african-groups

  • Last update from Deadline:

    While we saw The Purge: Election Year beating both earlier today, The Legend of Tarzan is stronger than we thought tonight with a $13.2M Friday and four-day of $42.6M. But still that’s not enough stateside to swing the $180M production into the black. Contributing to Tarzan’s improved ticket sales is the A- CinemaScore it received from moviegoers, a relief to its 33% Rotten Tomatoes score among critics.

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