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Friday Numbers AnalysisBy Tim BriodyDecember 13, 2003
After a few years (and last weekend) of films regularly topping the $20 million mark in December (whereas at one time the only film to ever do that was Beavis and Butt-Head Do America), the box office takes a step back in preparation for The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King with one moderately okay performance and two underwhelming openings.
Something's Gotta GiveThe Oscar-hopeful earned an estimated $5.1 million Friday, good enough for the top position. Strongly marketed and appealing to older audiences, the rest of the weekend should be strong as well. 2000's What Women Want had a 2.97 multiplier against an $11.3 million weekend. With a lower Friday figure, Something's Gotta Give should end up with an internal multiplier of around 3.1, good enough for a $15.8 million weekend.
Stuck On YouDespite opening on over 3,000 screens, the latest film from the Farrelly brothers earned a disappointing $3.4 million, and will not even come close to the $23.2 million earned by their last film, Shallow Hal. Here's hoping it doesn't get lost in the Return of the King juggernaut and is able to have some December legs. Give Stuck on You a 2.8 multiplier and $9.5 million for the weekend.
Love Don't Cost a ThingThe updated Can't Buy Me Love made an estimated $2.2 million opening night. It tried to duplicate the successes of last year's Drumline and last week's Honey, but the target audience didn't buy it.It just so happens that those two films also work as comparisons for an internal multiplier, so split the difference between them (3.06 and 2.7) and give Love Don't Cost a Thing a 2.88 multiplier and a $6.3 million weekend.
Notable HoldoversUh-oh. The Last Samurai falls 46.7% from last Friday. While the decline for the weekend should be a bit under 40%, that's not good news for when the 400-pound gorilla that is Return of the King hits next week. That will be the true test of whether the Tom Cruise vehicle will cash in on the holiday box office money train.In more predictible news, Honey collapses 62%, and will be down at least 55% from last weekend. The story of the week happens to be Bad Santa. While most of the holdovers have signifigantly lower Friday-Friday drops than last week thanks to the post-Thanksgiving weekend, Bad Santa is off just 10.6% from last Friday. Part of this is due to the addition of a few hundred screens, but considering a lot of Thanksgiving releases have notoriously abysmal final multipliers, Bad Santa is well on its way to the $50 million mark, and more than that isn't out of the question if its word-of-mouth continues.
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