Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
May 29, 2004
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The Day After Tomorrow
Yes, the disaster epic is indeed a smash right out of the gate, with a remarkable first day total of $24.3 million. Last year's Memorial Day champ, Bruce Almighty, started off with $20.8 million on its way to $86.4 million over the four-day weekend. I don't expect The Day Afer Tomorrow to duplicate that 4.15 internal multiplier, though it will still be a rather impressive opening (albeit just short of $100 million for the four days). The Day After Tomorrow looks to earn $97.2 million over the holiday weekend.
Raising Helen
Kate Hudson's romantic comedy got of to an very solid start with an estimated $3.6 million on Friday. Movies that aren't earning tens of millions of dollars a day during this weekend can have internal mulipliers in the mid-fours and up. That said, Raising Helen should finish the weekend with around $16.9 million.
Soul Plane
The Snoop Dogg-led spoof took in just under $2 million Friday, and I get the distinct feeling Soul Plane will have a much longer life on DVD. Give it $9 million over the four days.
Shrek 2
I'm not sure what's more impressive - that Shrek 2 only fell 27.7% from last Friday, or that by doing so, it still earned $20.5 million yesterday. The numbers were just too large this time around for a repeat of Shrek's performance over its second weekend (when it had an increase of 0.3% over the three-day weekend alone), but Shrek 2 will break $200 million today, and will have very nearly passed the first film's gross by Monday. It's astounding and basically unprecedented.
Over the Memorial Day weekend in 2000, Shrek had a mind-numbing multiplier of 5.58. Since the figures are more or less twice as large now, I'm going to give Shrek 2 an extremely conservative multiplier of 5, which places it at an astonishing $102.5 million.