Box Office Archive for November, 2005

Sunday Estimates/Analysis 11/27/05

Using BoxOfficeMojo, it is impossible to be sure, since their in-depth numbers only go a few years back, but it looks like this 5-day Thanksgiving may break the record set in 2000 when the second weekend of The Grinch combined with $80 million combined launch of Unbreakable and 102 Dalmations.
For clarity, the $162.1 million 3-day is second to the 2000 record-holding Grinch weekend. But the 5-day may be the best ever, given that Rent, Just Friends and others were a bit front-loaded at the box office.
If indeed this is the second straight record-breaking weekend at the box office, what angle will the boo birds use to keep the dream of a box office apocalypse going? Bet on a lot of chatter about ticket prices being higher than ever and a focus on approximated numbers of ticket sold (since there are no public reports on the actual numbers of tickets sold, expect for the MPAA

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Early Friday Estimates by Klady

(Note: A mistake on the Harry Potter estimate was made earlier and has now been corrected. My spologies.)
Answers?
Looks like Potter will hit $200 million in 10 days… with less than $35 million to go to reach that landmark.
Joaq The Line will be short of $60 million in 10 days, but still solid and likely enough business to lock up a Best Picture nomination, as the perception of business success is an important part of the Oscar positioning.
Chicken Little looks like it will have more like 125 million acorns at the end of 10 days.
Just Friends, on the other hand, will be lower than I thought yesterday, topping out at about $15 million for 5.
Rent is still heading to $20 million over 5… and $50 must feel a long way away. Alexander opened to about the same numbers last year and got to $34 million. A similar opening three years ago, Treasure Planet got to $38 million.
Title / Distributor / Gross* / Theaters / % Change
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire / WB / 23.6 / 3858 / -28%
Walk the Line / Fox / 7.9 / 3138 / +3%
Yours, Mine and Ours / Par / 7.3 / 3206 / New
Chicken Little / BV / 5.5 / 3475 / +55%
Rent / Sony / 4.4 / 2433 / New
Just Friends / New Line / 3.7 / 2505 / New
Pride and Prejudice / Focus / 2.7 / 1299 / +332%
In the Mix / Lions Gate / 1.8 / 1608 / New
Derailed / Wein Co / 1.8 / 2061 / -15%
Ice Harvest / Focus / 1.5 / 1550 / New
Zathura / Sony / 1.5 / 2620 / +2%
Also Debuting
Syriana / WB / 0.13 / 5 / n/a

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Early Thanksgiving Day Estimates

Can Harry Potter IV pass $200 million in 10 days or less? That is the golden question for the weekend.
Walk the Line should near $60 million in 10 days by the time the weekend ends. The solid show in a second weekend bodes well for a nice run into Christmas and position as the highest grossing awards movie when Oscar nominations are released in late January

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon