Daily Box Office Analysis for June 19, 2007
By Kim Hollis
June 20, 2007
BoxOfficeProphets.com
As we discussed yesterday, the obvious and easy comparison for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is the original Fantastic Four itself. Although it opened a couple of weeks later in the calendar configuration, both movies had almost identical debut weekends, with the sequel winning by just a couple of million. So in theory, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer should similarly on weekdays to its predecessor.
In 2005, the original Fantastic Four saw its first Monday drop down to $6,176,738 after a $56.1 million opening weekend. That's 11% of the weekend total, which wasn't much to write home about. Tuesday fell another 11% to $5,482,317. Ultimately, Fantastic Four, despite appealing to a family crowd with its PG rating and shiny effects, fell 59% in weekend two, which would put it ever so slightly ahead of the drops the blockbusters are seeing this year (they've been more in the 60% range).
Rise of the Silver Surfer, despite opening around $2 million higher than the first film, had a Monday total of $5,896,708. That's worse than the first Monday of Fantastic Four, and an omen of bad tidings. Tuesday isn't helping matters any, as the film fell an additional 13% from Monday to $5,101,445. Perhaps reviews and lousy word-of-mouth are having their effect. Given the downward trending to this point, I think it's an easy conclusion that Rise of the Silver Surfer should drop in excess of 60% this weekend - especially given the fact that Evan Almighty will siphon a lot of that child audience (even if tracking isn't so grand at this point).
As for Nancy Drew, a small 8% increase on Tuesday was good news. The bad news is that the film fell a spot as Shrek the Third's increase was even better. Let's look at a comparison or two for Nancy Drew:
Hilary Duff's The Perfect Man, like Fantastic Four, debuted in 2005. It compares nicely to Nancy Drew in that it is a pre-teen girl-targeted movie that had a less-than-stellar performance. The Perfect Man opened a million and a half lower than Nancy ($6.8 million for Nancy Drew versus $5.3 million for The Perfect Man). The good news for Nancy Drew is that it is definitely trending higher than the Duff failure. Nancy Drew's Monday was about 17% of its weekend total, while The Perfect Man was a touch lower at 15%. Nancy rose 8% on Tuesday versus The Perfect Man's 1% rise. Since the two films opened on the same weekend with regard to calendar configuration, this is great news. The Perfect Man had a tough drop in its second weekend of 50%. Assuming that trending holds steady for Nancy, she's not going to suffer so much. Of course, when we're talking about numbers this small, it's really all a matter of degrees anyway.