Friday Numbers Analysis

By Tim Briody

December 6, 2003

Woohoo!  The New Power Generation is back!

Blame it the traditional post-Thanksgiving doldrums or blame it on the first bad winter storm in the Northeast, there just isn't much good news for any film in the top ten this week.

The Last Samurai

The Tom Cruise period drama made an estimated $8.2 million Friday, one of the lower Friday numbers for a Cruise film in recent memory. Perhaps there is something to the weekend after Thanksgiving, which has long been known as a box office black hole, perhaps second only to Labor Day weekend. Not that The Last Samurai has bombed, as previous movies from this weekend have (a show of hands if you remember Analzye That came out this weekend last year. I thought so.), it's just that a $25.4 million weekend (using a 3.1 multiplier) seems underwhelming for a film with Cruise's star power that had Academy Award hopes. It will need some help over the next few weeks to get in on the holiday box office money train, as well.

Honey

Coming in with a much better than expected estimated $5.0 million Friday, Honey takes the prize for surprise of the week. The best comparison film from this genre and time period is last year's Drumline, which managed a 3.06 internal multiplier off a $4.1 million Friday. We'll drop that number to a 2.8 to account for it being the first weekend in December and Honey will finish the weekend with $14.0 million.

Notable Holdovers

Partially due to the fact that most people were off last Friday, the week-to-week declines for every film in the top ten are over 50%, with the best one being Bad Santa at a mere 55% and the worst offender being The Cat in the Hat (which now needs help to reach $100 million) at 82%. Among last weekend's openers, The Haunted Mansion tumbles 77%, The Missing drops 74% and Timeline falls 76%.

Extrapolated Estimates for the Top Ten (Three-Day)
Projected
Rank
Film
Estimated Gross (M$)
1
The Last Samurai
25.4
2
Honey
14.0
3
Elf
11.0
4
The Haunted Mansion
10.4
5
Bad Santa
8.0
6
Gothika
6.9
7
The Cat in the Hat
6.5
8
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
5.1
9
The Missing
4.9
10
Love Actually
4.4

     


 
 

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