Box Office: Madea Goes To Jail Grabs $14M Opening Day For A Possible $39.2M Weekend
By Steve Mason/Feb. 21, 2009 12:15 am EST
Although I am not necessarily a fan of Tyler Perry movies, I am a Tyler Perry fan. He traveled the country for years doing live stage shows in order to fine-tune his act, and he identified an under-served audience – African Americans, and more specifically black, Christian women. Now he makes two movies a year, and he has two television series’ on TBS – House of Payne and Meet the Browns. He built a multi-million dollar studio in an under-served area in Atlanta, taking advantage of tax credits for building in a blighted neighborhood. Now he is building a mini-empire. He produces, writes, directs and stars in his projects, and he even helps to finance them.
Perry has proved that it is possible to reach out to an audience that Hollywood has generally ignored. He saw a demographic market, and now he knows how to hit that “sweet spot” over and over again. He is an unabashed capitalist and, although he may never win an Academy Award for this brand of movie, he is selling a lot of movie tickets. Madea Goes To Jail was not screened for critics, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. Here’s TP’s movie resume.
ALL-TIME TYLER PERRY OPENINGS
Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes To Jail – $39.2M opening (projected)
Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion – $30M opening – $63.25M cume
Diary of a Mad Black Woman – $21.9M opening – $50.6M cume
Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married – $21.3M opening – $55.2M cume
Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns – $20.1M opening – $42M cume
Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys – $17.3M opening – $37.1M cume
Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls – $11.2M opening – $31.3M cume
Even the bad movies are doing better-than-expected. For example, Sony’s low budget teen comedy Fired Up is a throw-away this weekend, and most of my regular sources had it opening in the $4M-$5M range. Instead, it grabbed a decent $2.5M on its opening day and has a shot at $7M. It will likely finish seventh for the 3-day, but that’s so much better than it could have been.
The $60M Coraline (Focus), the spectacular 3-D film from Henry Selick, will most likely wrap up the weekend at #2 with about $11.2M, down just 24%, after a $2.8M Friday (fifth for the day). This movie will have banked $53.5M by Monday, and, if you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and experience just how far 3-D has evolved from those cardboard glasses with the red and blue lenses.
Luc Besson’s Taken was second for the day at $3.25M, but will finish #3 for the weekend with about $10.7M. That will give this Pierre Morel-directed action flick a head-turning $94.5M, and it should pass $100M next weekend.
The Flower Films rom-com He’s Just Not That Into You (Warner Bros) seems likely to nose out the fast-fading Friday The Thirteenth for fourth-place. Based on the Greg Behrendt-Liz Tuccillo self-help book, the Ken Kwapis-directed chick-flick managed another $3M on Friday (#4 for the day), which could translate to $9.5M for the 3-day.
Meanwhile, movie-goers showed up at Crystal Lake last weekend, but America’s teens have quickly lost interest. Friday The Thirteenth from director Marcus Nispel and Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes fell to only about $3.2M in second Friday sales (the movie stunned with over $19M last Friday), and Jason will limp to a possible $9.2M. That would mean a 77% drop, which would be one of the fifteen biggest weekend-over-weekend tumbles in modern box office history.
EXCLUSIVE STEVE MASON EARLY FRIDAY ESTIMATES
NEW – Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes To Jail (Lionsgate) – $14M, $6,890 PTA, $14M cume
Taken (Fox) – $3.25M, $1,050 PTA, $87M cume
Friday the Thirteenth (Warner Bros) – $3.2M, $1,031 PTA, $50.37M cume
He’s Not That Into You (Warner Bros) – $3M, $984 PTA, $64.54M cume
Coraline (Focus) – $2.8M, $1,299 PTA, $45.13M cume
Confessions of a Shopaholic (Disney) – $2.62M, $1,047 PTA, $23.26M cume
NEW – Fired Up (Sony) – $2.5M, $1,381 PTA, $2.5M cume
Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Sony) – $1.54M, $545 PTA, $115.92M cume
The International (Sony) – $1.42M, $604 PTA, $14M cume
Pink Panther 2 (Sony) – $1.13M, $425 PTA, $26.8M cume
Push (Summit) – $952,000, $506 PTA, $22.5M cume
NEW – Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes To Jail (Lionsgate) – $39.2M, 2. $19,291 PTA, $39.2M cume
Coraline (Focus) – $11.2M, $5,197 PTA, $53.53M cume
Taken (Fox) – $10.7M, $3,449 PTA, $94.45M cume
He’s Not That Into You (Warner Bros) – $9.5M, $3,115 PTA, $71M cume
Friday the Thirteenth (Warner Bros) – $9.2M, $2,963 PTA, $56.37M cume
Confessions of a Shopaholic (Disney) – $8.5M, $3,391 PTA, $29.13M cume
NEW – Fired Up (Sony) – $6.8M, $3,757 PTA, $6.8M cume
Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Sony) – $5.4M, $1,908 PTA, $119.78M cume
The International (Sony) – $4.56M, $1,932 PTA, $17.13M cume
Pink Panther 2 (Sony) – $3.72M, $1,403 PTA, $29.4M cume
Gran Torino (Warner Bros) – $3.09M, $1,522 PTA, $133.88M cume
