‘Gran Turismo’ Makes $1.4M In Previews – Deadline

“You’re not actually going to allow them to do that, are you?” Such are the gripes across the City of Angels from rival distributors about Sony’s public-facing acknowledgment that they’ve previewed Gran Turismo over the last two weekends, lagniappe box office which will be included in Friday’s total.

Yesterday starting from 2PM showtimes, the feature take of the Sony Playstation game earned $1.4M at 3,156 theaters, including PLF and Imax monies. The Neill Blomkamp directed movie has a shot at No. 1 this weekend making $12M-$15M at 3,800 theaters.

Sony at the end of July decided at the last minute to move Gran Turismo‘s wide opening from Aug. 11 to Aug. 25. This was for several reasons: one to get away from the heat of Barbenheimer, and also to create word of mouth on a movie that doesn’t have its starts to promote due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

In major markets such as LA, cinemas have been playing Gran Turismo on Friday, Saturday and Sunday; two weekends back-to-back. We’ve heard that preview cash has amounted to $3M+, but Sony hasn’t verified that yet.

As far as those rivals whining about Sony including the cash in this weekend’s gross — let he without sin cast the first stone. Y’all have juiced your weekends and Fridays with preview money going back to forever. Hello! New Line’s Shazam back in 2019 boasted a preview figure of $9.2M which included a robust advance Fandango sponsored screening. Paramount and eOne’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves made $5.6M in previews which included Thursday showtimes (starting at 3PM), as well as Amazon sneaks among other pre-screenings. That studio was holding advance screenings for Dungeons and Dragons because they believed in the film and also wanted to get the word out. The Batman preview figure included $4M Tuesday previews in its overall preview figure of $17.6M back in March 2022. I can keep listing and boring you.

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