Shutter Island ready for first place

Unlike a week ago, this weekend we only have one movie opening wide, Shutter Island. A Martin Scorsese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and based on a best selling novel by author Dennis Lehane is probably enough for most people to want to check it out and more than enough to make it number one at the box office in NA at least for one weekend and maybe even two.

This is the 4th movie that Scorsese has made with DiCaprio and based on their track record ($77.8 million for Gangs of New York in 2002, $102.6 million for The Aviator in 2004 and $132.3 million for The Departed in 2006) it’s safe to say that Shutter Island will at least be a decent hit in the $100-$130 million region. With a reported production budget in the range of $65-$85 million it shouldn’t be to hard to make that back, so I say this will be a good investment for Paramount Pictures, 2991 theaters shows they know that.

On RottenTomatoes Shutter Island stands at a 67% with 91 fresh reviews and 44 rotten ones, good enough for the people that care for that sort of things, so another plus for this picture. The running time is a little long at 138 minutes but then again, The Departed was 150 minutes and it still did really well at the box office, so no harm there.

I think this movie will probably open in the $40-$50 million range, my best guess would be $44 million since it’s an R rated movie after all.

The rest of the pack should all have higher then usual drops because of the inflated Sunday that we had last weekend (Monday was Presidents’ Day in the US so a lot of people were free that day, basically Sunday acted like a second Saturday).

The top 5 should look something like this (and I really hope I’m closer this time then I was last weekend):

1. Shutter Island Paramont $44M (NEW)
2. Valentine’s Day WB $20.5M ($90.7M)
3. Avatar Fox $15.9M ($687.6M)
4. Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lighting Thief Fox $15.4M ($58.8M)
5. The Wolfman Universal $12.6$ ($53M)