Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
June 16, 2007
BoxOfficeProphets.com

It's time to stretch the limits of your stretching ability.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

The superhero sequel earned $22.6 million on Friday, which blows away everything else in the top ten. Back in 2005, Fantastic Four opened with $20.8 million, so kudos to the marketing department for focusing on what few things worked in the first movie to be able to top its opening day. Now, that $20.8 million became $56 million by the time the weekend estimates were released, a 2.7 multiplier. I'm expecting something just a little below that, mostly because there probably wasn't an excessive Friday night rush factor, seeing as we've never met anyone who really enjoyed the first movie. I'm going to give it a 2.6 multiplier, which still translates into a quite awesome $58.7 million weekend.

Nancy Drew

A pre-teen adaptation of the pre-teen detective books earned a middling $2.8 million on Friday. It'll probably do a little better over the rest of the summer, but where it's likely to shine most is its eventual DVD release later this year. Figure about $9 million for the weekend.

Notable Holdovers

Last week's top dog, Ocean's Thirteen, earned $5.9 million, a Friday-to-Friday decline of 55%. There's a decent chance it ekes under an overall weekend decline of 50%, but you would have liked to see something closer to the mid-40s decline of Ocean's Eleven. Look for about $18 million in weekend number two.

Surf's Up drops 51% from a week ago, quite high for an animated movie, and though it'll do a bit better over the rest of the weekend (expect about $9.3 million), it'll be forgotten when Ratatouille hits next week.