‘Fantastic Four,’ Ricki and the Flash,’ ‘The Gift,’ ‘Shaun The Sheep,’ Late Nights

UPDATED, 8:57 AM: 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four debuted last night at 8 PM and ended up pulling in $2.7M from 2,900 locations. The superhero franchise expands to about 3,950 screens tonight and is still on track for a $40M+ three-day. The opening of Fantastic Four comes as its director Josh Trank revealed his own disappointment in the film via a Tweet that was put up yesterday and then quickly taken down. It read: “A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would have received great reviews. You’ll probably never see it. That’s reality though.” The reviews on this picture have not been that great to be sure, but the tracking on it has been fairly high.

In fact, in terms of demos it had greater interest in several segments than Ant-Man, but it chalked no where near the $6.4M it got before going into an opening weekend of $57.2M. In comparison, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer ended up with $21.9M Friday in June 15, 2007 for a $58M three-day.

In terms of social media, FF’s Facebook page is adding 14k fans a day and has up to 1.4M total. Video views are spread amongst an impressive 88 different trailers and spots with eight of the top 10 videos’ view counts climbing with the hottest trailer on international channels, says RelishMix. Total views are at 88M with earned, reposting ratio of 11 to 1, which RelishMix notes is good, given the mass array of materials on owned channels. Its Twitter hashtag — #FantasticFour — has been climbing consistently up to 14k Twitter hashtags just yesterday.

UPDATED, 8:30 AM: Sony’s Ricki and the Flash, on only 1,349 stages, took in $200K last night as this female-driven film heads into the three-day weekend. The Meryl Streep-starring film opened at 7 PM. The studio plans to expand to more theaters in the weeks to come.

The comps for this hippie chick film are The Hundred-Foot Journey which grossed $310K in 2,203 locales when it debuted last year on Aug. 8. It opened to $10.9M but was on more screens going into the weekend than Ricki‘s 1,600. The other comp is The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which grossed $130K in late nights when it opened in March of this year. In 1,573 theaters, that female-skewed picture grossed $8.5M for its three-day.

Total YouTube views for Ricki and the Flash is at 11M and earned/owned reposting is at a ratio of 4 to 1, with Facebook reach at 200k for the film and 15M for Sony Pictures. The Twitter reach for Ricki and the Flash is skewing older female just like the film’s demographics.

Ricki has 49k fans on Facebook with plenty of videos to share, view rates are moderate and buzz is stronger. How much do studio marketing execs wish that Meryl Streep had at least some managed social pages? There are about 2M FB fans standing by. The studio can thank Rick Springfield for promotion on social though with 490k on FB and 48k on Twitter seeing the message for the movie.

PREVIOUSLY, 7:40 AM: The box office preview numbers are starting to roll in so we will report them as they come. STX Entertainment’s first film out of the gate, The Gift, was looking a bit light yesterday — as was everything but Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F. Despite its great reviews, the Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton thriller from Blumhouse bowed last night at 8PM in only 1,820 theaters to $585K. It goes wide in 2,503 theaters today.

This picture, written and directed by Edgerton, was made on a very small budget (we hear $5M with STX’s financial portion at $2.5M … although some put at a higher negative cost). It was also produced by Rebecca Yeldham who shepherded this film from the get go. It has a solid marketing campaign behind it (lots of TV which adds to the marketing expense) and the critics are praising it as a quality film so we expect a high CinemaScore from audiences tonight. It also has a 93% fresh from Rotten Tomatoes. We estimated that it would grab anywhere between $7M and $10M and we think maybe $8M+.

For comps, we’re looking at The Gallows which bowed on July 10th this year. It had a Thursday late night number of $900K and ended up with a $4.5M Friday for a $9.8M weekend. The Boy Next Door while it was released in Jan. 2015 and had an audience heavily skewed Hispanic, brought in $500K on its late night Thursday and went onto make $5.7M Friday for a $14.9M three-day.

Inside Out, which was No. 10 last night after seven weeks in release, pulled in an estimated $645K on Thursday. The fifth installment of Mission: Impossible grossed $4.5M last night on 3,956 screens last night. Paramount still has hold on IMAX screens.

In terms of social media, YouTube views for the top few trailers for The Gift are strong but tapering off for earned and reposted spots with a ration of 5 to 1. RelishMix is reporting that total YouTube views are just over 12M with top spot at 9.2M and Jason Bateman’s 1.6M Twitter followers are missing out on his messaging for The Gift. Why? Because he’s not promoting on social media. But Blumhouse is slugging away on social.

Meanwhile, Aardman Animation’s Shaun the Sheep Movie took in an estimated $715K on Thursday, which was a bit lighter than the $852K in 2,202 theaters it pulled in on Wednesday. The stop-motion clay-animated film expands into 2,320 theaters today, courtesy of Lionsgate. It has grossed an estimated $1.5M as it heads into the weekend.