You know there’s trouble when paranormal craziness happens, but don’t worry the trouble is for the rest of the films being left way behind, certainly not for Paranormal Activity 4.
There are few certain things in life: death, taxes, teenage girls enamored with sparkly vampires, and Paranormal Activity films being huge box office hits regardless of the number at the end of the title. Yes, I made the mistake of betting against this franchise before, I won’t again. But before I bore you with my mostly inaccurate guesstimates, let’s recap the box office experiences of past Paranormal Activity flicks.
The paranormal shenanigans started back in 2009, September 25th to be more precise. Paranormal Activity made its debut in just 12 theaters with a modest take of $77,873. The weeks went by and instead of falling into obscurity this little gem became ever more popular, culminating with a fantastic $21.1 million on the October 23-25 weekend. But most impressive was this new and extremely cheap film bested Saw VI at the top of the box office, back then the undisputed king of annual horrors on the big screen. $107.9 million was the final total of Paranormal Activity in North America, more than any Saw film ever made.
Paramount were not about to throw away the massive opportunity to have a new popular franchise in their backyard so we got Paranormal Activity 2 just a year later. Opening with $40.6 million, it went on to gross $84.7 million. That was quite a drop from the original so there was some fear Paranormal Activity 3, which came out a year later, could be the last one if it kept dropping. Well those fears were put to rest after the 3rd film exploded at the box office with a $52.5 million opening weekend. With a total of $104 million by the end, it still wasn’t on par with the first film but it certainly made quite a few steps in the right direction.
Fast forward to the magical year of 2012 and we have, you guessed it, Paranormal Activity 4. Now if history taught me anything in regards to box office, part 4 is when a series really starts to fall because quite frankly people get bored of it. But wait a minute there, I said I wasn’t gonna bet against Paranormal Activity again, so what the hell is this? Well I still ain’t betting against, cause if I were, I’d tell you Paranormal Activity 4 will disappoint with a $20 million opening. No, that won’t be the case since I have it on good authority (read: I cheated by looking up the film’s $4.5 million midnight take) that Paranormal Activity 4 will definitely make a lot more than that, something like $38 million, an easy #1.
In 2nd my dusty crystal ball tells me we might see Argo, Ben Affleck’s thriller, with about $14 million. Following in 3rd, Hotel Transylvania will have maybe $13 million.
Fighting for the #4 spot we have Taken 2 and newcomer Alex Cross, based on the bestselling series of books by author James Patterson. Tyler Perry plays the titular character and that alone guarantees Alex Cross at least $12 million, which is what I think both this and Taken 2 will do.
Next week we have another busy weekend with four new wide releases: Chasing Mavericks (I was actually invited to a screening of this, could not attend unfortunately), Cloud Atlas (try to explain this film in a single sentence), Fun Size (a comedy about Halloween) and Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (if you’ve played Silent Hill 3, you might want to check this one out).
