Liam Neeson’s ‘The Grey’ battles ‘Underworld’ for the top spot at the box office
Daniel S Levine
The box office suddenly went form having just one thriller, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, to being filled with them in just a few weeks. Contraband was joined by Underworld: Awakening and Red Tails last weekend. This week, Liam Neeson's Alaskan R-rated thriller The Grey and Man on a Ledge with Sam Worthington hit theaters. All five films are expected to battle for the top of the box office this weekend, with Katherine Heigl's One for the Money in between.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Grey, which is distributed by Open Road Films, is directed by The A-Team's Joe Carnahan and cost just $ 25 million to produce. The studio is hoping that Neeson's newly-minted action hero status, thanks to the success of Taken and Unknown, will help the film make between $ 10 million and $ 12 million. However, Entertainment Weekly expects the film to do better than that, reaching at least $ 14 million.
Still, if Open Road's last action thriller, Killer Elite, is any indication as to how well The Grey will do, both numbers might be overly optimistic. The Wrap reports that Killer Elite grossed just $ 53 million worldwide on a $ 70 million budget.
Underworld is likely to slip from first to second, making between $ 10 million and $ 10.5 million. The film made $ 25.3 million last weekend.
The George Lucas-produced Red Tails is expected to stay in a solid third place with $ 10 million, compared to last weekend's $ 18.8 million opening gross.
One for the Money and Man on a Ledge are likely going to come in close fourth and fifth place finishes. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate did not screen One for the Money for critics, but are using a promotion with Groupon to try to lure audiences to the $ 42 million film, which is billed as an action-comedy. Industry projections show that the Heigl-starring film should make between $ 6 million and $ 8 million
Summit Entertainment's Man on a Ledge, which was scheduled to come out before Lionsgate bought Summit, is projected to make around $ 8 million to $ 10 million despite the already bad reviews. EW actually predicts that One for the Money might squeeze by Man on a Ledge with $ 9.1 million.
Many Oscar-nominated films get big expansions this weekend. Fox Searchlight will expand The Descendants from just 560 theaters to a whopping 1,997, hoping to add to its $ 52 million domestic gross, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Martin Scorsese's Hugo will go from 300 to 965, as Paramount hopes the big-budget movie can add to its $ 56.3 million domestic gross after being nominated for 11 Oscars. Albert Nobbs, for which Glen Close received a nomination, will also expand to 246 theaters. The Iron Lady, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy should also experience an uptick in gross after being nominated for Oscars.
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