Box Office Archive for May, 2007

Sunday Estimates by Klady

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The Weekend Slogs On…

“You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.”

Box Office Mojo is estimating $31 million for P3 for Sunday, which is a similar Sunday drop to X3, which was the biggest dropper last Memorial Day Sunday… which could be right or $5 million or so wrong.
Sony (via C. Nikki Finke) is estimating at $35 million Sunday… which could be right or $5 million or so wrong.
Keep in mind that Sony’s Thursday estimate was about $3 million high… and other studios were in other places… estimates are estimates… not that there is anything wrong or unexpected about that… unless you are selling absolute accuracy.
What is apparent is that Monday will be in the mid-20s, which would put the 4.5 day cume in the 150s, which will not be a record. (4-day record is $161m… 5-day is $173m) Regardless, we will still have had three of the four biggest movie openings in history in this dainty month of May 2007.
That said, as the freaky numbers have shown us this summer, P3 looks like it will pass SM3’s first week gross of $182 million by the time Thursday grosses roll around. But then it gets interesting again…
Next weekend, Pirates 3 will face its first traditional 3-day weekend. Last year’s Memorial Day opener, X3, which also did Thursday night screenings, still fell 66%, even though logic would suggest a relatively small drop would make sense, as the 4-day weekend spreads the gross. Nope. P3 will face at least as much new firepower as X3 did in The Break-Up, with Knocked Up and Mr. Brooks combined. Drops were a lot smaller in earlier years, with Shrek 2 as a for instance.
Still, a strong week and a 50% drop for the 3-day only next weekend, would make for about a $245 million 10-day (or 11…or 10.5, depending on how you want to account for Thursday), which would put P3 behind only P2 after the second weekend. Still, a 55% drop and it’s back behind Spider-Man 3 as well.
(For the sake of clarity, SM3 fell permanently behind SM2 day count-for-day count on Day 11. Using the “first weekend/second weekend / third, etc” scale, SM3 fell behind SM2 on the first Monday for both films, pulling back ahead with a stronger second weekend, then falling permanently behind on the second Monday. SM3 fell permanently behind the first SM on the third Sunday.)
In other news, 2007 is now officially the biggest May in history, finally passing 2002 with Friday’s grosses.

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Klady's Friday Estimates

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For reference, the chart had been typo’d and is now accurate.

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The Plundering Has Begun

Sorry

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B.O. Hell First Look

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This chart will be updated in the days to come, but since the town is shutting down this afternoon, I thought I’d get a head start and open up the conversation…

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The Summer To Date

I am going to do a summer column later this week, but here are a couple quick numbers that I think are interesting…
Even though 2004 ended up being the biggest box office year ever, it is not the best early summer ever. That honor belongs to 2002, which rode the original Spider-Man and Star Wars: Episode Two – Attack of The Clones to $527 million in the first 17 days, starting with the first Friday launch on, that year, May 3.
This year, in spite of two of three top openings of all time, the same stat… first 17 days from the first opening Friday, has generated “only” $508 million.
If you took only the May weekend numbers so far, 2007 is only about $12 million ahead of 2002. (About $75 million ahead of the mistouted 2004.) In other words, weekdays are running behind so far.
In order for 2007 to be the biggest May ever, the box office needs to generate about $265 million in the 8 days that started yesterday (Monday) and end on Memorial Day Monday (May 28).
Spider-Man 3 is already behind both the first two films by a couple of million. Heck, Shrek The Third is even behind Shrek 2 at the end of the first weekend (Shrek 2 opened on a Wed).
Pirates 3 has decided to have 8p shows, so current record holders will surely hold the film to 5-day opening standards – a 3-day record is very unlikely while opening on a long weekend… things stretch – which means the record breaking by-end-of-business-Monday number would be $172.9 million.
Even if P3 doesn’t hit that insane number, this May is likely to end up the biggest ever. And we’ll see in a few weeks whether the films will match or surpass past year’s May releases overall. But don’t get lost in the weekend hype. The ability to create massive openings is intriguing. But the real news may well be elsewhere… the information is still coming in…

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Sunday Estimates by Klady

CORRECTION: Apparently, Len missed updating the Spider-Man 3 gross for the weekend… the current estimated total should be $282 million. Sorry for the error.
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Friday Estimates by Klady

$39.3m puts Shrek The Third in line to be the third highest opening gross ever, enough ahead of #3 that the issue of Thursday night screenings, which couldn

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Box Office Hell – May 18, 2007

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An Added Note: As most of you have noticed, I have taken myself out of the predictions game for the most part. Spouting studio tracking is particularly idiotic on films like Shrek The Third and Spider-Man 3 because it is always wrong and should be

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The Trouble With Shrek

I missed Saturday

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Klady's Sunday Estimates

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Friday Estimates by Klady

Spider-Man 3 will drop in the mid-60s, which I suggested was not much of a problem in a comment yesterday. I

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Box Office Hell

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Box Office Note

Last summer, I wrote day by day about the fastest grossing film of all time, Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest, as it kept pace after its then-record opening ahead of all others for more than a month.
So you might be wondering how Spider-Man 3 is doing after its record-setting 3-day opening…
It fell behind Pirates 2 on Tuesday, Day 5, with $169.4 million versus P2’s $169.5 million.
On Day 6 the spread got wider, with P2’s $183.7m gaining $7.5m on SM3’s $176.2m. It also fell behind both Star Wars: Episode One – Revenge of the Sith ($182.7m) and Spider-Man 2 ($180.1m).
Of course, all of this doesn’t diminish the fact that Spidey 3 had a truly breathtaking opening. And May fatigue does not scream that people dislike the film. Schools are open later than ever and that massive opening eats through must-sees dramatically.
But thinking about to The Right Stuff… “And for a brief moment, Spider-Man 3 became the greatest box office smash anyone had ever seen.” 5 days.
(Corrected for too many Pirates, 7:41P)

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Sunday Numbers by Klady

$150.8m.
More than $15 million more than Pirates’ previous record.
As of this morning, Spider-Man 3 is the fastest grossing film in history.
And now, we will watch the magic of the very thin air up there as we find out how front loaded the film is or is not. With very little in its way next weekend, even a 50% hold would be amazing. And a drop of anything less than 70% would be absolutely fine, by any sane analysis.
It turns out I was, indeed, wrong about Lucky You, the bottom movie in my summer chart of films that I thought would gross over $10 million. I was wrong because I overestimated it.
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Quote Unquotesee all »

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