The OtherArena

[jdw]

$17M weekend for Potter-5. Came into the weekend up $15M on Potter-4, came out up $12M. That's likely going to be the patern - losing ground on the weekend, picking up ground on the Summer Weekdays vs. December Weekdays.

Potter-4 will cut into that come it's Christmas-New Years run, when it bumped up to some respectable numbers. That starts in Week 5 and through Week 7.

Transformers is down to $3M ahead of Sherk-3's pace, losing ground. It's $19M behind Spidey-3, and didn't pick up and ground. It's $10M ahead of Pirates-3's pace, and has been picking up ground there. Looks like it above Pirates-3 ($306M to date), but below Shrek-3 (trickling towards $320M).

John

[jdw]

[jdw]

[Bob Morris]

This summer has definitely been a pretty huge one for the box office. Three movies passed $300 million (Spidey 3, Shrek 3, Pirates 3), one is getting close (Transformers), one will pass $250 million (Potter 5) and one other has a good chance of reaching $250 million (Simpsons).

That's six movies which will all end up pulling in big box office numbers.

Off the top of my head, I don't remember the last time there were so many big summer hits, all getting into the $250 million to $300 million range. There have been several years in which one or two movies were head and shoulders above the rest (Spidey 2 and Shrek 2) but none I can remember in which so many pulled in excess of $250 million, and the range of their numbers wasn't that wide.

[corrado]

http://www.boxofficeguru.com/weekend.htm

revised a little. It actually made $74 mil this time. That's even better than the original estimate. Great news for the Simpsons indeed.

[Bob Morris]

Early weekend estimates are putting Bourne Ultimatum at $70.1 million with Simpsons pulling in $25.6 million.

Rush Hour 3, if I'm not mistaken, will open this coming weekend.

[jdw]

Simpsons fell off big to $25.6M, down 65.4%.

It's second weekend was below Ratatouille's ($29M), but it's well ahead of Ratatouille's pace through this point ($128.5M vs. $109.5M). On the other hand, Ratatouille is reeling it.

Simpsons looks like a $200M movie if it doesn't fall off another 60% next weekend.

Potter-5 kept up its patern - behind Potter-4 on the weekend, beating it up on the weekdays. This weekend the gap was down to just $1M for the three days, after Potter-5 "won" the prior week by $2M+. It's at $260.8M at a point where Potter-4 was at $244.8M and had another $45M+ left in the tank. I think Potter-5 remains a safe bet for $300M, though Potter-4 is a week away from its Holiday run which will cut into the gap.


John

[jdw]

Continuing the Cars comp:

$4.9M Cars weekend 7
$4.0M Rat weekend 6

$12.4M Cars Week 7
$11.8M Rat Week 5


It's up to $188M, needing just under $12M to get to $200M.

Cars had right around $15M left in the tank after Weekend 7.

Rat is slowing down a bit, and dropped 1000 theaters over the weekend. Still, it needs essentially what it made last week to get to $200M. Seems reasonable.


John

[jdw]

Transformers finally fell behind the Shrek on the "through this weekend" totals. That of course has always been a bit skewed since Transformers had the odd extended opening weekend. I think we can throw out it's chances of catching Shrek fort he #2 spot.

It made a decent amount less than Pirates-3 did on this weekend, but has about a $9.3M lead. I don't think Pirates has enough time to close that gap, so Transformers is likely the #3 movie of the year unless Potter gets incredible legs (unlikely).

As someone else mentioned in the thread, five $300M movies is pretty impressive. On the othr hand, the last movie in three of these series did:

$373,585,825 Spidey-2
$441,226,247 Shrek-2
$423,315,812 Pirates-2

The movies are going to be collectively closer to a quarter *billion* short in the US. One has to think the studios and makers of them aren't 100% happy.


John

[Bob Morris]

Shrek 3's drop can likely be attributed to the fact that Shrek 2 came off the good reception the first Shrek movie got. People who didn't check Shrek in theaters likely decided to catch Shrek 2 when they liked what they saw from the first one in DVD viewings.

Pirates 2 likely got the same benefit. I'm betting a big chunk of the money Pirates 2 got was from people who didn't see the first Pirates in theaters, then saw it on DVD and liked it so much they gave the second one a shot in theaters.

Neither of the second movies of either franchise was as good as the first, IMO. If enough movie fans felt the same way, they likely weren't going back to the theaters. Back to the Future had a similar problem, as I've mentioned, with the second and third films, in that the second film wasn't good enough to convince movie-goers to head to the theater to see the third film.

Of course, BTTF differs from Shrek and Pirates in that the second BTTF made less money at the box office than the first one did. No doubt that's a testament to how poorly received the second BTTF was... and while I don't think Shrek 2 or Pirates 2 were as good as the first of the movies in those franchises, both were definitely better than BTTF 2.

Spidey seems a bit different. I didn't like the first one and I liked the second. Spidey 2 didn't drop off that much from the first Spidey, but it still didn't generate enough buzz from people who rented Spidey DVDs to go see Spidey 2 in theaters.

With Spidey 3, I believe it did get the poorest reviews among the three. Reviews were mostly good for the first two, not so much for the third. Combine that with its early May release, and Spidey 3 simply wasn't going to generate the revenue the first two got.

X-Men went the opposite route, as the first two movies got pretty good reviews and likely generated enough buzz to give X-3 a good chance at drawing more box office than the first two. Of course, X-3 was also helped by opening Memorial Day weekend.

I don't know if any of the "third of a franchise" movies released this summer would have done better if released on different dates. The "opening week" might have been better, but where they would ultimately finish depends on their legs. And Spidey 3, Pirates 3 and Shrek 3 all dropped considerably after their opening weekends.

Transformers, on the other hand, didn't drop off as much. I don't think that can be entirely attributed to the Fourth of July "weekend," especially since Potter 5 opened the following week. Transformers, surprisingly, had better legs than the "third of a franchise" movies that were released.

[Bob Morris]

Transformers has become the summer's fourth $300 million movie.

Harry Potter 5 is up to just above $272 million. It may fall short of $300 million given its current pace.

Simpsons has really dropped at the box office. It should still reach $200 million, but not much more than that.

Here's the full weekend chart.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

[jdw]

[jdw]

Ratatouille passed $200M this week on next to no drop from last weekend (-1.5%).

Transformers went past $310M. It's $2M up on Pirates for 3rd place in the Summer, but has no chance of catching Shrek-3's $321M for 2nd. Spidey of course long since wrapped up the summer crown with $336.5M.

Potter-5 will come out of Labor Day weekend about $5M up on Potter-4, which as pointed out finished at $290M. Potter-5 is going to top that, but doesn't have the legs to get to $300M.

I'm still pretty confident that if Pirates or Potter came out in the slot Transformers did that they would have made more than Transformers. I still think Pirates would have won the Summer if it came out on that day.

Bourne will get to $200M on Monday.

The Simpsons doesn't look like it has enough legs to get to $200M - it was down to a $5M week this past Sat-Fri. It's declines we also pretty high rather than slowing.


John