Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
August 20, 2005
BoxOfficeProphets.com

He's painting action figures, yet wonders why he can't get sex.

Is it weird that August is producing more hits than July did?

The 40 Year-Old Virgin

The Steve Carell comedy directed by Judd Apatow earned an impressive $7.3 million Friday. As Wedding Crashers' strong run starts to slow down, here comes another comedy to take its place. The opening night figure might be inflated just a tad so we'll go with a conservative internal multiplier of 2.7 for a $19.7 million weekend.

Red Eye

Wes Craven's thriller drew a decent $6.2 million Friday. With its main stars having breakouts of their own in other films this summer, that certainly didn't hurt. Figure around a 2.8 internal mutliplier and a $17.4 million weekend.

Valiant

The CGI-animated Valiant took in a meager $1.8 million Friday, a disappointing figure for even a film as buried as this one. Even a somewhat above average multiplier will still place it at around $6 million for the weekend.

Notable Holdovers

Four Brothers falls 49.4% from a week ago which is a bit higher than expected given its target audience. Look for a weekend decline of around 45% or so to $11.6 million.

Kate Hudson's Skeleton Key fell a much more typical 58.9% from last Friday. Figure a 55% decline or so and a $7.2 million second weekend.

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo and The Great Raid have fallen off the face of the earth, much like this weekend's other new release, Supercross.