LOS ANGELES – More air came out of “Interstellar” on Monday.
Final weekend ticket sales for Christopher Nolan’s space epic were weaker than Paramount had hoped, coming in at $47.5 million, according to Rentrak, a box office data service. Paramount had said on Sunday that “Interstellar” would reach $50 million – a figure that edged the film within the range of prerelease expectations.
Instead, the $165 million picture was unable to crack that threshold even when two additional days of limited screenings were included. Final tallies show “Interstellar” taking in $49.7 million, including sales from Imax locations that began playing the film on Wednesday. Paramount on Sunday had estimated ticket sales of $52.2 million for the five-day period.
The initial box-office figures that come out on Sunday morning are based on actual ticket sales for Thursday night sneak peeks, Friday, Saturday and the studio’s best guess of Sunday’s grosses. Hollywood has gotten very good at this; estimates are typically within a few hundred thousand dollars of the final figures.
For instance, Disney’s “Big Hero 6” was No. 1 over the weekend, generating final ticket sales of $56.2 million — exactly as Disney had projected.
But sometimes, when actual Sunday sales figures arrive on Monday, the end result can be different, which is what happened with “Interstellar.” A Paramount spokeswoman had no immediate comment.
“Interstellar” did have some happy news on Monday morning: Warner Bros., which is handling the film’s foreign distribution, said that Sunday sales projections were actually a bit low. Warner estimated on Sunday that the movie would take in $80 million from 62 overseas markets; the final tally was $82.9 million.