The teenage tearjerker If I Stay grossed an estimated $1.1 million in ticket sales from its opening showing earlier this month. Featuring Chloe Grace Moretz and Jamie Blackley, the film is expected to gross roughly $25 million in its opening weekend during its domestic debut.
Adapted from a young adult novel of the same name, the film is about a young girl who is forced to choose between letting herself die and waking up from a coma from a car accident that kills her entire family and leaves her on the brink of crossing over. If I Stay was produced by MGM, which acquired the rights to the bestseller by author Gayle Forman and then co-financed the film production with New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. The emotional drama has appealed to many audiences so far, and its strong reviews have played a part in its success at the box office.
The next big opener is Sony’s When the Game Stands Tall, a film about a small town football team and its 150-game winning streak. In third comes Sin City: A Dame to Kill For. It was too late for this sequel starring Eva Green, Jessica Alba, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which opened Friday with a sad $2.62 million. The original, which debuted in April of 2005, had a $29m opening weekend.
The winner still seems to be Guardians of the Galaxy, which earned $4.83 million on its fourth Friday. The late night grosses of all films this weekend is going to be significantly affected by the fact that kids have gone back to school this week in most of the country. The end of summer has historically been a difficult time for films to debut, as summer movie going is slowly winding down.