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Tracking a movie like Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story 3” certainly isn’t child’s play.
Once a four-quadrant family film gets to the point at which virtually everyone in the market knows about the film, it becomes exceedingly hard to accurately predict just how many folks will turn out for the opening weekend.
“That’s why we’re seeing highs in the $125 million range and lows in the $80 million range,” Chuck Viane, president of worldwide theatrical distribution for Disney, told TheWrap.
Regardless, opening in 3D, and spread across more than 4,000 U.S. and Canadian theaters, the third “Toy Story” installment will likely yield this weekend the biggest opening ever for a Pixar-produced film, besting the $70.5 million start by “The Incredibles” in November 2004.
The G-rated “Toy Story 3" was directed by Lee Unkrich, who also directed the second installment, and returns voice stars Tom Hanks and Tim Allen.
The film has generated a 100 percent fresh score on movie-review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes and looks to be virtually unchallenged by the week’s other wide-opener, Warner’s DC Comics-adapted “Jonah Hex” … which, paradoxically, is scoring a 0 percent fresh.
Co-produced with Legendary Pictures, Warner officials aren’t holding high hopes for the $47 million movie, which stars Josh Brolin and Megan Fox, and is tracking to only yield about $10 million this weekend. (See accompanying story, "Critics Roast, Boil and Smack ‘Jonah Hex’ Around.")At least the overall domestic box office is looking a little perkier, after Sony’s remake of “The Karate Kid” broke open what had been an ice-cold market with an incendiary $55.7 million start last weekend.
Garnering an A-grade CinemaScores from moviegoer-satisfaction tracker CinemaScore, Sony will be looking for a week-to-week drop well under 40 percent for “Kid,” which will compete directly with “Toy Story” for some of its audience share.
As for the “Toy Story” franchise, it’s been over a decade since the last installment, 1999’s “Toy Story 2,” grossed $485 million globally.
Since then, much of the property’s core audience has moved away from home, leaving their parents the task of storing their Buzz Lightyear dolls in the attic.
However, Disney began last year an effective campaign of reinvigorating the franchise, putting out a 3D double bill of the first two installments, which about broke even with its P&A spend at $32.1 in worldwide ticket sales.
Meanwhile, this past week, presentations of “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2” led the boy-targeted Disney XD channel to its best ratings ever in key demos, with the second installment garnering 2.2 million viewers, the second best program number ever for the network.
Among limited openings this weekend, Fox Searchlight will release “Cyrus,” a comedy starring Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill, John C. Reilly and Catherine Keener.
Also debuting will be IFC’s “The Killer Inside Me,” English director Michael Winterbottom’s often gruesome adaptation of Jim Thompson’s novel starring Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba.