'One Direction: This Is Us' Scores $2.7 Million Thursday Debut

When the story of 2013 as a movie year is written, it will surely include the fact that the once-rare advance-night showings become all-but required. And yet again this weekend we have at least one movie that had enough anticipation among its fan-base to justify early sneak-peaks.  The Morgan Spurlock-directed concert documentary One Direction: This Is Us earned a decent $2.7 million from Thursday night showings.  The film began screening for the general public at 7:00pm, with Sony realizing that the core young female audience couldn’t be up too late on a school night, and continued pretty consistently up until the usual midnight screenings. Fun fact: Apparently 98% of online ticket purchases were from females, with 2% for dads, boyfriends, young gay males, and male film critics.

Barring various variables (frenzied anticipation, heavily-marketed sequels, etc.), most films these days do over/under 5% of their weekend business in advance-night showings.  If we go by the standard multiplier, then One Direction: This Is Us does about $54 million for the weekend, which would be genuinely astonishing, as the biggest-grossing concert documentary ever isJustin Beiber: Never Say Never which earned $73 million domestic total. For comparison, Michael Jackson: This Is It earned $72m while Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds earned $65m on fewer than 700 screens. So yeah, let’s presume some serious front-loading is at work here. But how much front-loading is the big question, and frankly at this point it’s guess work. Let’s presume for a moment that 10% of the weekend audience saw the One Direction documentary last night, which would give the film a still impressive $27 million for the weekend.

For the record, the top Labor Day Fri-Mon debut weekend is Rob Zombie’sHalloween remake back in 2007 with $30 million, after which it falls all the way down to the $21 million debut of The Possession last year and the $20 million debut of The Transporter 2 back in 2005. Even a Hunger Games-eqsue front-loaded weekend of 13% gives the film $20 million for the weekend, which still gives it more than the $19 million total domestic gross ofJonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience and within a hair of the $25 million total for Katy Perry: Part of Me. As you can see, and as we’ll discuss more over the weekend, the relatively recent concert documentary sub-genre is a feast or famine situation.  You either rise to the top like Justin Beiber or crash to earth like the cast of Glee ($11.8 million total for Glee: The 3D Concert Movie).