BIJOU BOXOFFICE: Early Friday Report

Uh oh.

Deadline has what are admittedly very preliminary numbers for Friday's boxoffice.  But if they hold, this holiday season may not be a festive one for Hollywood.  SHERLOCK HOLMES:  GAME OF SHADOWS appears to be headed for a $16M Friday (including a little over $1M from midnight screenings), which would likely mean around a $45M weekend.  While that's not a terrible number, it pales next to the $62M opening of the first Holmes movie in 2009 (which started on Christmas Day), and would be far below Mitch Metcalf's weekend prediction.  The opening would be just about equal to the that of Tron: Legacy on the same weekend last year, and that film only reached a total gross of $172M, compared to the $206M for the first Holmes picture.

Similarly, ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS:  CHIPWRECKED appears to be having a $7M Friday, on its way to a $24-26M weekend.  This would again be far lower than the $44M opening of the first Alvin on the parallel weekend in 2007, and while the second Alvin isn't apples-to-apples because it opened on the Wednesday before Christmas, the opening day number would be a shocking 60% below Alvin 2's $18M start.  

MISSION:  IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL is closer to Mitch Metcalf's prediction with a $10-11M weekend, and it can't be usefully compared to the other Mission pictures because it's playing in only 423 theatres for the next 5 days.  However, those theatres are mostly Imax, meaning significantly higher ticket prices than the norm, and some of them are boosted by featuring the extended trailer for the upcoming Dark Knight Rises.

In a smaller opening of 973 theatres, YOUNG ADULT, which has gotten little of the critical or awards help it needed, seems to be headed for a muted wide expansion that will reach around $3K in per-theatre gross.