Hollywood hasn’t seen a traditional disaster movie in awhile, at least not one directed by Roland Emmerich. That changes this weekend with San Andreas, which already got off to a good start from Thursday screenings.
Early numbers from New Line and Warner Bros. suggest that the film, which stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, opened to $3.1 million, notes The Hollywood Reporter.
Johnson is coming off the incredible success of Furious 7, which sped past the $1.5 billion mark worldwide. Of course, he still has to prove that he can shoulder an entire movie as the only leading man. His most recent solo movies - Journey 2 and Hercules - both failed to hit $30 million in their opening weekends.
San Andreas is expected to hit around $40 million this weekend. That will be even better than last week’s Tomorrowland, which only made $32.2 million over its first three days.
The only other movie hitting theaters this weekend is Cameron Crowe and Sony’s Aloha, which has been hammered by critics. Still, fans of Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone and Rachel McAdams might be interested to see their favorites on the big screen. It will be really lucky if it gets close to $15 million.
Disney will probably be closely watching to see how far Tomorrowland falls in its second weekend. If it can somehow muster up over $15 million, it would be a surprise. The film not only got hurt by critics, but it also loses IMAX screens to San Andreas this weekend.
image of the ‘San Andreas’ cast courtesy of Famous/ACE/INFphoto.com