Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
June 30, 2007
Ratatouille to John McClane: Now I have the number one movie. Ho ho ho.
Ratatouille
The latest animated release from Pixar earned a very good $16.4 million on Friday. However, there's a mild cause for concern in that last June saw the release of Cars, which had a first day tally of $19.5 million. That also suffered a slightly weaker internal multiplier of 3.2. The difference between Cars and virtually every other Pixar film is that Cars was not quite as well received, at least critically. Ratatouille is a return to the extremely high marks of more recent Pixar entries like The Incredibles and Finding Nemo. A very solid multiplier should be in the cards, as well as solid legs through the next month. Look for a weekend estimate of $56.6 million.
Live Free or Die Hard
After $15 million in its first two days of business, the return of John McClane earned $10.5 million on Friday. It's a mild bump from Wednesday's take, but perhaps Fox would have been wiser to eschew the Wednesday opening as it only makes the three-day total look less impressive. It should still do decently though, but this will definitely be a topic for the Monday Morning Quarterback crew. I'm figuring $28 million for the weekend and $43 million over the five-day period.
Sicko
Around this time three years ago, Michael Moore shocked the world. Not necessarily for the content of his film Fahrenheit 9/11, a scorching look at the Bush administration in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States, but for the fact that on just 868 theaters, it topped the box office with $23.9 million, setting all sorts of records for documentaries in the process.
Sicko is out on about half as many screens, and though it's nowhere near the top of the charts, a Friday gross of $1.3 million on 441 screens is nothing to sneeze at. Oddly, Bowling for Columbine never saw that many theaters in its entire run (despite setting a then-record for documentary box office), so there are no apt comparisons among Moore's other films. March of the Penguins had a 4.0 multiplier in its first weekend of "wide" release, but I highly doubt many parents are taking their kids to see this. We'll knock that down by a most of a point and go with a 3.2, giving Sicko $4.1 million for the weekend, a decent start.
Evening
Evening, a film I couldn't even begin to explain the premise of (but what a cast!), lands in the tenth spot with $1.2 million on Friday. Let's just call it $3.7 million for the weekend and move on, shall we?
Notable Holdovers
Last week's champ, Evan Almighty slumps 55% to $5 million on its second Friday. Clearly kneecapped by Ratatouille, $50 million in eight days wouldn't be so bad if its budget wasn't four times that. The weekend decline will be less than 50%, but it's still going to be a giant money sink. Expect $16.5 million in weekend two.
1408 drops about the same amount, which it's supposed to do since it's a horror film. The star power and positive word-of-mouth are keeping it from completely collapsing, though. Figure $11.7 million for the weekend.
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