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Indiana Jones and the Giant Sacks of Cash

Kim Hollis: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull grossed an estimated $151.9 million in its first five days of release. Its $126.9 million is the second best Memorial Day performance of all time. What do you think of this result?

Reagen Sulewski: Once you get past $100 million in three days, the numbers start to lose a lot of relative meaning. But this is a huge win no matter how you slice it. There was a tremendous amount of life left in this brand, and basically all they had to do was show up and collect their money. I would say they did not do too much more than that, but that's another story.

Pete Kilmer: It's a great result and shows that Harrison Ford and the boys (Steven, George) still have a lot of goodwill left with the audience in regards to this franchise. While it wasn't a home run movie, it was fun and it did have some great moments. Now they've laid the seeds down for future movies, which I hope they do. Just with tighter stories.

Tim Briody: Ridiculous amount of nostalgia + high gas prices and movies still inexpensive considering + leading man who hasn't had a hit in forever finally goes back to the cash cow = $150 million in five days. It's amazingly impressive, especially since we've seen previous Memorial Day films open strongly and then dip a bit in the heart of the weekend, and Indy didn't do that.

Joel Corcoran: I agree that it's a huge result - and a fantastic one in my opinion. But I think it's all that more impressive given the 19-year gap since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Hardly anyone under the age of 25 has seen an Indiana Jones movie in a theater, so the huge reception at the box office is pretty startling. I agree that there was a lot of potential goodwill to mine here, but we need to recognize the fact that Spielberg, Lucas, and the entire marketing team behind this movie did a great job of re-introducing the entire Indiana Jones story to younger audiences.





If you think about it, Indiana Jones means as much to people under the age of 30 as The Little Mermaid, Dead Poets Society, Ghostbusters, or Bill & Ted. Getting that demographic to pay attention to Indiana Jones was hardly an easy task. And if this movie had a weaker or misguided marketing strategy behind it, we'd be making some very different comments right now, so I think we need to recognize the marketing geniuses as much as the creative geniuses involved.

David Parker: I think the five-day number is about what analysts and tracking predicted. The more impressive thing to me is the performance after Sunday. It certainly improved day-to-day greater than I expected.

I do wonder if Paramount had Indy as the clear winner over Iron Man for the May box office crown before this weekend, and if that order has changed in their minds.

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