Due to Good Friday this week, Ready Player One got an early jump on previews last night and ended up doing solid business.
Ever since Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull became the director’s best opening at the domestic box office a decade ago ($100.1 million), he’s largely confined his filmography to adult-oriented, awards season fare. So there haven’t been many previews for Spielberg films in quite awhile. And Ready Player One, though based on the best-selling Ernest Cline YA novel, isn’t franchise property like we’ve seen in Easters past like Batman V. Superman or Fast and Furious. This makes comparisons to other previews pretty hard but I would say since Wednesday preview launches are very rare, that awareness was high enough to get people out early and it bodes well for its opening this weekend.
What is common is that most Spielberg films do start smaller and build on their success gradually. I predicted a $38-42 million opening but others think it could hit $50 million after this Wednesday launch. We will have to wait and see on that one but this is a healthy start for a film with a production budget estimated at $150-175 million.
