Weekend Estimates by Klady – July 5
So… July 4 wasn’t a big movie day. Not shocking.
The question now is what Sunday will look like and the truthful answer, even though estimates have been made, is that no one really knows. Monday is not a day on which schools and businesses close. So Sunday isn’t long-weekend special. As a result, estimates have Sunday up from Saturday’s estimated numbers and down significantly from Friday’s, which in the cases in which there was a day off was the day. (That was a mouthful.)
In this box office standoff being presented to the media, Paramount is estimating that Transformers: ROTFL will be $3.4m higher today and Fox is claiming that Ice Age Tres will go up just $3.1m. This would close the gap between the two films from a reported (by them) $600,000 on Saturday to $300,000 Sunday.
A 61% drop for Tr:ROTFL is about standard… nothing to crow about… nothing to cry about.
Our Len Klady had Tranformers winning the 3-day weekend by $100,000… but like I say… no one has any legitimate way of knowing. He had Transformers $100,000 further ahead than others on friday, and he also has both films estimated lower on Sunday. We’ll see.
I expect a bit of a stand-off to see who announces their “final” first. Logically, Ice Age will end up on top. But when you are talking about estimate variations that can change “the winner” based on less than 3% of the weekend total, there is plenty of room for play.
Actually, Public Enemies has a fantastic chance.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/showdowns/chart/?id=crimevs.htm
… @ $100 million domestic that is.
The drops for next weekend are going to be eye opening.
anyone know the tracking on Bruno. I don’t hear a lot of buzz.
Mojo is calling it for Ice Age 3. School is out for the summer, so all the families went on Friday.
With the 4th falling on a Saturday the government observed Friday as the legal holiday. Libraries and courts were closed, the stock market was closed, post offices were open only until noon. Banks were open for a full day — at least where I live.
Come on, “Hurt Locker” – go wide, make bank, reward a bunch of risk-takers who made a fucking great film. I actually think quite a few of the people who lined up for “Transformers 2” just might dig the Bigelow flick more if they gave it a shot.
I believe the Hurt Locker website says more cities July 10 (including Portland and Seattle) then opens wide July 23?
C’mon, SJ.
Do you really think any self-respecting “Transformers” fan will actually queue up for “The Hurt Locker”? They might discover (and like) it ten months from now on dvd, but I really can’t imagine a whole lot of them paying first-run admission prices for an “Iraq movie” without m/stars. (Or even an “Iraq movie” with stars. Period.)
And just how “wide” does anyone really think this is going to go on Juy 24th? 450 screens? 600 maybe? If it ever hits 1000 prints–and crosses, say, the $20-million threshold in summertime release–I’ll be genuinely shocked. Pleased, but still shocked.
Granted, “HL” is a terrific film (I’ve been raving about it since last September’s Toronto FF). But since when do first-rate movies (excepting Pixar ‘toons,of course) automatically translate into box-office heavyweights? Not too bloody often.
Yes, I realize that it’s more of an action/genre film than an axe-grinding “Iraq movie,” but just try telling/selling that to the masses.
P.S.= Anyone who saw–and dug–the Bigelow flick definitely needs to check out HBO’s “Generation Kill” miniseries from last summer.
“Do you really think any self-respecting “Transformers” fan will actually queue up for “The Hurt Locker”? ”
Funny, the more comments I read like this on these movie web sites the more I conclude that most of the posters on them just hate movies.
The notion that the only good films are obscure things that nobody likes and all blockbusters are shite…is a shite point. Truth is, you are probably glad The Hurt Locker is not a smash because if it was you would find a way to hate it.
And can we please lay off the “middle America hates Iraq movies” meme.
Pretty much all of those movies were shite. Name a good one. Maybe The Kingdom and that did ok. DePalma’s, Stop Loss, Rendition, Syriana, the Cusack one, the Robbins one…they were all craptacular pieces of crap.
Real. Crap.
I have not seen The Hurt Locker but if it fails to click, blame the poor quality of the films that came before it, not the movie going public who spends their hard earned dollar.
Oh and lets not forget the worst of the lot…Lions for Lambs. I am sure there were some others in there I missed also.
Lay the proper blame where it lies.
Wow, looks like they’re calling a tie! This is, according to the AP. I wonder if the two studios just called each other up and agreed to it. They can’t both possibly came up with the same estimates separately.
Nicol D:
“Pretty much all of those movies were shite. Name a good one. Maybe The Kingdom and that did ok. DePalma’s, Stop Loss, Rendition, Syriana, the Cusack one, the Robbins one…they were all craptacular pieces of crap.”
Nicol, point-blank question: Which of those movies did you actually see? I wanna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you actually saw them with your own two eyes, but I have a very conservative friend (who used to be Libertas Fan #1 and probably reads Breitbart as gospel) who regularly makes the same argument and rants about those movies… then one day when pressed about a plot point in “Rendition,” he got all flustered and finally conceded he actually hadn’t seen it, but was going by what he’d heard from your boy John Nolte.
For the record, most of those ARE pretty bad or at least medicinal, though by no measure on this planet is “Lions for Lambs” a worse movie than DePalma’s “Redacted,” which is pathetic on every level and godawful enough to make me rethink an entire lifetime of admiring its director.
But again, I want to know you are relaying YOUR opinion from when YOU actually sat down and watched “Rendition” or “Stop-Loss,” and that you’re not merely (as you so ALWAYS do) recycling TALKING POINTS you’ve read online.
In the Valley of Elah is terrific, except for the Annie Lennox music cue and upside down flag symbolism at the very end.
I know I wouldn’t see one of those Iraq movies because they really do look like “good for you medicine.” Well fuck that, and fuck you Hollywood for thinking anyone cares about your points of view on the subject. I’d be inclined to see Stop Loss however, because Bigelow is the bomb.
Stop-Loss is Kim Peirce…for Bigelow you mean Hurt Locker…?
I’d like to get around to seeing both since both directors aren’t really Hollywood jaded-hack types
“The Hurt Locker” expands beyond NYC/LA on Friday and is due to go national on 7/24. Summit should have no problem finding megaplexes and theaters that will play it.
@sharonfranz: Mojo puts Ice Age 3 at #1 based on per-theater average. AP relies on a rent-a-quote hack.
Yeah Lota, I meant Hurt Locker. I doubt I’d ever see Stop Loss in my lifetime.
I like Transformers (although I haven’t seen the sequel yet) and will most definitely be queuing up for The Hurt Locker.
I just think there are a lot of people who would go see a war movie where the soldiers are treated as brave, three-dimensional, tough, yet flawed motherfuckers instead of the questioning, what-we-did-over-there-was-WRONG/Off-to-Canada! characters of “Stop Loss” (which, yes, I saw in the theater).
That said, yes, probably most who see the trailer think it’s going to be another anti-Iraq movie due to the setting.
And Rob, you’re dead on about “Elah.”
I haven’t been watching a good variety of TV lately so I don’t know the answer to this question: is “The Hurt Locker” being promoted in any real way AT ALL for the regular folks who don’t frequent blogs and websites like this one and thus aren’t privy to the buzz? Do they even know that there’s a movie called “The Hurt Locker” playing out there right now (or soon)? Like I said, I don’t see enough of everything to state this with authority, but it really doesn’t feel like the movie has a presence in the world beyond our little movie lover sandboxes, so maybe that’s one reason there’s cause for worry here.
Big Hollywood is already accusing Hurt Locker of leftist bias because some of the troops use profanity and not all of them display concern for the Iraqi people.
Slightly surprising to me was that the ostensibly right-leaning Iraq war doc Brothers At War turned out to be really good. Too often such movies put agenda before art (true of some lefty ones as well), but it just told a really good story.
One of the biggest problems with The Hurt Locker is “The Hurt Locker.” What kind of title is that? How does that attract any audience? No matter what the subject matter, that title would leave most people nonplussed. And for a war movie, you’re just adding to the degree of difficulty with “hurt” in the title.
I think “The Hurt Locker” is a nice tight title that attracted my attention back when, so there’s at least an anecdotal rebuttal to your rhetorical question. And it’s hardly in the realm of batshit deranged title choices like “Quantum of Solace”, which is actually nonplussing for filmgoers in comparison to an intriguing title like this one.
1) Love both of those Transformers films.
2) I am a huge Jeremy Renner fan.
and
3) This means I will see The Hurt Locker as soon as it comes to town.
4) Renner is the fucking man. Why he’s not a bigger star is beyond me.
Yes, “Quantum of Solace” was a bad title. But it was kinda irrelevant – it was just “The New Bond Flick”.
But I’m sure some people liked it. As there are some who like “The Hurt Locker.” I just don’t think “The Hurt Locker” is an especially appealing title for the masses.
Everytime I tell people to see “The Hurt Locker”, they ask, well, what does that mean?
I guess it could be called “The Defuser”.
Still, great flick, loved it, hope others see it when it goes wide.
As for Public Enemies…I have mixed feelings on the movie. I recommend it. But, I left the theater feeling a bit underwhelmed.
The Actuals just came in. Transformers wins by about $500,000. Yawn.
Seriously, I thought The Hangover’s ceiling was $200M, I could see it getting to $250M. Easily the most profitable film of the year. Awesome.
Yeah, the new James Bond movie could just as well have been titled “sfljoefnfb of fosdmferh” and people would have still known what it was, but don’t tell me that “Quantum of Solace” wasn’t a damn good omen of the mess the audience would find once it saw released.
There’s nothing wrong with “The Hurt Locker” as a title. I still think the main reason people see the title and think “what the fuck is a Hurt Locker?” is the fact that almost nobody knows the movie even exists. We’ve all known about it for most of a year now probably, but the general public at large is probably 95% unaware of this movie.
“actuals”
right up there with “everyday low prices.”