Ryan Reynolds’ ‘Free Guy’ Is Alive At The Weekend B.O. Heading For $26M+
Saturday AM Update: In what is a big win for an original piece of IP in the middle of August when kids are heading back to school, in particular during the pandemic, Disney’s 20th Century Studios’ Free Guy was truly vibrant yesterday with $10.5M, including $2.2M in Thursday night previews. This puts Shawn Levy’s directed Free Guy on a track toward an estimated $26.4M opening. It’s a number that is higher than the mid-to-high teens that tracking had been seeing, and Disney proves once again, it can beat projections during the pandemic.
FREE GUY: Heading into the weekend, social media analytics corp Relish Mix saw Free Guy‘s social tracking running 42% above awareness norms for an action comedy with a reach of 345.4M on social media from 20th Century channels at 43.2M and social media marketing machine Reynolds who counts 76.1M followers. In regards to chatter, RelishMix noticed that no one was being deterred by the new vax card policy. Despite “the trailer simultaneously showing too much, it still made audiences want to see the movie all the more with excitement for Jodie Comer from Killing Eve and Taika Waititi with positive comparisons to Ready Player One, Wreck It Ralph, The Matrix, The Truman Show on steroids to GTA Grand Theft Auto.”
Also shouting out about the film are Waititi to his 4.7M fans, and Comer to her 1.9M. Sweet piece from Reynolds on the pic’s background actors:
DON’T BREATHE 2: Still it’s an impressive pull-off here by Sony with Don’t Breathe 2 as RelishMix reports that the cast wasn’t activated on social media. That said, “With a short five week ramp up to Friday the 13th, Don’t Breathe 2 social media awareness approached normal levels at 77.1M across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube with activity at normal levels too. Viral reposting rate is near normal at 31:1 with view counts at 32.3M on YouTube for 3 videos and 5.3M views on Facebook for 18 videos,” reports the analytics corp.
RelishMix adds, “Convo for Don’t Breathe 2 is mixed-positive as fans who saw the original in 2016 wondering which story elements will return, the merits of a sequel with call-out comparisons to Terminator 2, A Quiet Place, Bird Box to Split. Fans think that ‘blind man’ has become one of the most badass characters in cinema history — antagonist or protagonist, blind man is a guy you don’t wanna mess with. Audiences are friend-tagging each other on Facebook while threads debate the potential for this chapter on YouTube.”
RESPECT: There’s even great word of mouth here on social media with RelishMix observing, “Fans are getting goosebumps and chills of excitement for Jennifer Hudson as Aretha with call-outs declaring those who got vaccinated specifically to go into the theater to support the opening of the film. Additional excitement bubbles around casting choices of Marlon Wayans, Mary J Blige and Audra McDonald — and songs that will be in the film plus early callouts for a ‘best actor’ Oscar.”
The hurdle here for Respect is its target demo of females (63%) and African Americans (47%), who in movie tracking research the more reluctant demographics to come out during the pandemic, but we’ll see. Older crowd here with 86% over 25, 64% over 35, 44% over 45 with guys showing up at 37% and 36% Caucasian, 11% Latino and 6% Asian/other. Respect sang the best on the East coast Mid-West where close to 63% of its money came from verus the average of 51%.
Respect’s social cast is enthusiastically led by Hudson who is sharing her journey with the movie to her 16.5M fans. Also touting are Wayans with 19.1M, Forest Whitaker 2.9M, and Marc Maron 1.4M. Blige shared the trailer yesterday to her 10M Facebook followers.
