Madagascar 3 taking the top spot this weekend wasn't necessarily a surprise, considering the PG rating and a screen count of 4,258 compared to Prometheus' 3,396 screens. The surprise was that Prometheus and Madagascar 3 were neck and neck on Friday.
With the R-rating and other summer movies still pulling in decent numbers, Fox was expecting Prometheus to open in the $30 - $40 million range, but it managed to outperform and earn $50 million. Midnight screenings totals were big and people kept turning up throughout the weekend, showing that an R-rated film can still do big business during the summer.
With Prometheus planned as the start of a new/rebooted franchise, what are the chances of a sequel happening? It all comes down to the numbers and we're going to compare Prometheus to other Fox genre films that recently had a sequel greenlit. With a production budget of $93 million, Rise of the Planet of the Apes opened domestically to $54.8 million and went on to earn $481 million worldwide. X-Men First Class had a production budget of $160 million, earned $55 million on its first weekend and brought in a worldwide total of $353 million.
Prometheus has already had quite a successful international run and is at $141 million worldwide. If it doesn't have a huge US drop over the next couple of weeks, it should have no problem getting into the $300 million territory. Fox will probably wait until seeing Blu-ray/DVD sales to make anything official, but when/if Prometheus crosses the $350 million mark, we say a sequel is likely.
Next weekend's big openings are Rock of Ages and That's My Boy. Here are the top 10 box office results for this weekend:
1. Madagascar 3 - $60,350,000
2. Prometheus - $50,000,000
3. Snow White and the Huntsman - $23,021,000
4. Men in Black 3 - $13,500,000
5. The Avengers - $10,809,000
6. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - $3,235,000
7. What to Expect When You’re Expecting - $2,710,000
8. Battleship - $2,286,000
9. The Dictator - $2,150,000
10. Moonrise Kingdom - $1,579,000
After spending more than 10 years as a consultant in the tech and entertainment industry, Jonathan James launched Daily Dead in 2010 to share his interest in horror and sci-fi. Since then, it has grown into an online magazine with a staff of writers that provide daily news, reviews, interviews, and special features.
As the Editor-in-Chief of Daily Dead, Jonathan is responsible for bringing the latest horror news to millions of readers from around the world. He is also consulted with as an expert on zombies in entertainment and pop culture, providing analyses of the zombie sub-genre to newspapers, radio stations, and convention attendees.
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