20th Century Studios

UPDATED, 10:27 AM: 20th Century Studios‘ Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes landed on NRG’s three-week tracking Thursday with a $54 million domestic opening outlook, which jibes with what Quorum’s six-week projection was a few weeks ago.

Unaided awareness, which indicates that those being polled about the May 10-debuting movie already are aware it’s coming out, is strong with men over/under 25. However, first choice is a tad stronger among guys under 25.

As we told, you a start at this level for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes would be on par with the 2011 Andy Serkis-James Franco movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which debuted to $54.8M. Right now, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is expected to be the biggest opening of May. In the same breath, Warner Bros/Village Roadshow’s Furiosa is going to blare its loudspeaker once the pic’s world premiere hits Cannes.

Disney showed off extended footage from Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes earlier this month at CinemaCon. It’s a very different movie from the millennium predecessors, set entirely on the Apes’ planet where the humans are the hunted.

PREVIOULSY, April 2: Apes are hot these days coming off of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, and beast fever will spill over into the weekend of May 10-12 when 20th Century Studios’ Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is looking to open to $54 million-$61 million.

That’s the latest forecast from tracking service Quorum, which reports on six-weeks-in-advance box office projections versus the standard three weeks by longtime tracking firm NRG.

Men, natch, are quite huge with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, bigger than last summer’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts ($61M) and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One ($54.6M 3-day).

Currently, Universal’s The Fall Guy, which is getting a special screening at CinemaCon after its world premiere at SXSW, is tracking 17 points in awareness behind the Wes Ball-directed Apes, six points behind in interest, and eight points behind in preference of seeing the movie in a theater over home. Warner Bros/Village Roadshow’s Furiosa is 26 points behind in interest from Apes, making the latter one of May’s hottest must-sees at the moment.

All three titles have had teaser and payoff trailers in the marketplace (granted, Furiosa is going to get a big boom out of its Cannes Film Festival world premiere). Social media stat firm RelishMix reported that Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was the second-most watched Super Bowl movie trailer 24 hours after the game with 43.2M views, behind only Marvel Studios/Disney’s Deadpool & Wolverine with 75.4M views.

When it comes to a Planet of the Apes movies, the opening U.S./Canada average since 20th Century Fox rebooted the late 1960s sci-fi franchise in 2001 with the Tim Burton-directed, Mark Wahlberg-starring title is $63M through four movies. That 2001 movie opened to $68.5M and ended at $180M domestic, and $362.2M worldwide. That franchise wasn’t built out, but another one later in the millennium fired up with 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes starring Andy Serkis as Caesar the gorilla, as well as James Franco. That movie opened to $54.8M, and made close to the amount of the 2001 title stateside with $176.7M and even more around the world with $481.8M. Rupert Wyatt directed Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but handed the directing reins to Matt Reeves for 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and 2017’s War for the Planet of the Apes.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes opened to $72.6M stateside and finaled at $208.5M and $710.6M WW, the biggest ever for the franchise, while War for the Planet of the Apes eased to a $56.2M domestic opening, $146.9M domestic final and $490.7M global take.