New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

The other two new openers last weekend are heading in opposite directions in terms of weekday holdover appeal. Surf's Up actually improved from Monday to Tuesday with $1.93 million, while the bottom fell out for Hostel: Part II. The gorno bomb experienced what was easily the steepest drop out of the top ten, falling 14.3% to $781,000. The appropriate word here is "Timbeeeeeeeeeeer!" Of course, this sort of behavior is unsurprising. As was incidentally mentioned yesterday, the key to summer box office revolves around K-12 students having free time and a large enough allowance to take in a movie when so inclined. There are certain movies they are more likely to view, and a horror movie with atrocious buzz does not qualify in that regard. Meanwhile, animated movies and comic book adaptations are right in their wheelhouse. We'll see the effect of that later in the column.

Today and tomorrow, we will spend time trying to find some comparison models for the two openers from last weekend that matter, Ocean's Thirteen and Surf's Up (sorry, Eli Roth). Today, we will discuss the latest Steven Soderbergh heist movie. Tomorrow, the penguins (hopefully led by Feathers McGraw) will have their moment in the sun.

As a reminder, the George Clooney heist flick made $4.16 million on Monday, then fell 9.3% to $3.77 million yesterday. That's a grand total of $7.93 million, roughly 21.9% of the $36.13 million it earned over the weekend. Coming up with some comparisons for this one is much easier than I had stated yesterday. I was trying to find June and July titles with similar opening weekends that were also demographically similar. Titles such as Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Bourne Identity, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Minority Report were all considered. Upon reflection and research, however, I have a much easier choice for the first batch of weekdays. Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve were both released in December, and I have stressed over the past few days that December box office behaves much differently than any other time of the year. The trick is that this is the case as the holiday approaches. Earlier in the month, movies behave with more normalcy, making these two titles acceptable models for comparison (thank God).

Keeping the knowledge that December is still a bit tweaked relative to June in mind, here is the data. The first Danny Ocean movie opened to $38.1 million in its first three days then followed with $3.04 million on its first Monday before increasing an impressive 16.3% the next day to $3.53 million. That is what we call the genesis of word-of-mouth success. The good news for Ocean's Thirteen is that its first two days of box office are $1.36 million larger. The great news for it is that Ocean's Eleven's weekday to prior weekend ratio was only 17.2%, a mark Ocean's Thirteen has comfortably exceeded. The bad news is that if we adjust for 2001 to 2007 ticket price inflation ($5.65 then versus $6.79 now), Ocean's Eleven has a nearly identical $7.90 million in its first two days despite having a worse calendar configuration in terms of box office performance (gross generality: it's theoretically easier for the same consumer to see a movie on June 11th than it is on December 1th1).

Continued:       1       2