Sorry, Charlie

By Tim Briody

June 28, 2003

The girls react angrily to news of their opening day totals.

Can we still call a summer movie that opens to less than $40 million a disappointment? I make the case that Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle qualifies because it will do something that has now become the rule with sequels as opposed to the exception: fail to top the opening weekend of its predecessor.

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

With an estimated Friday number of $14.7 million, the sequel beats the Friday number of the original, which took in $13.7 million on day one. However, the November 2000 release benefitted from a 2.94 weekend multiplier en route to a $40.1 million weekend. June is not nearly as kind a month, especially to sequels. A 2.65 multiplier for the weekend gives Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle a rather disappointing $38.9 million, and unless extremely positive word-of-mouth kicks in over the next few weekends, consider this franchise finished.

28 Days Later

The Danny Boyle-directed zombie thriller earned a quite-decent $3.3 million Friday on just 1,258 screens. It should do a little better in the multiplier department than the last cult horror film, April's House of 1000 Corpses. A 2.6 multiplier gives 28 Days Later weekend earnings of $8.5 million.

Notable Holdovers

Perhaps the biggest shocker of them all this frame is the massive collapse of The Hulk in weekend two. Down a ridiculous 76.8% from last Friday, the idea of a franchise is quickly evaporating. Hulk should still barely eke out $100 million by the end of the weekend, but $150 million is going to look like a stretch.

Alex & Emma also falls an alarming 61.3% from the previous Friday. Wasn't Kate Hudson hailed as the next Julia/Meg/whomever after the $100 million gross of How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days? Oops.

Extrapolated Estimates for the Top Ten
Projected
Rank
Film
Estimated Gross (M$)
1
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
38.9
2
The Hulk
18.5
3
Finding Nemo
13.9
4
28 Days Later
8.5
5
Bruce Almighty
5.9
6
2 Fast 2 Furious
5.6
7
The Italian Job
5.2
8
Rugrats Go Wild!
3.5
9
Hollywood Homicide
2.8
10
Alex and Emma
2.6