Daily Box Office Analysis for August 22, 2007
By David Mumpower
August 23, 2007
BoxOfficeProphets.com
We're using some prior R-rated comedies for comparison. You know the drill by now, so you probably have the batch memorized by now. There's Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, American Wedding, Wedding Crashers, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Dodgeball: A True Understory Story, The Break-Up and the best comparison, Knocked Up. Yesterday, we dealt with a pair of data points: Monday-Tuesday decline and actual dollars. Today, we will add a third category, Monday-Wednesday decline, while still comparing daily decline and actual dollars.
All that is important for you to remember about our prior discussions is that Superbad's Monday total was second best out of the titles in question while its four-day total through Monday was also second best, missing the top revenue total by only $10 thousand. Today's discussion will demonstrate two important aspects of box office analysis. The first is just how crucial earlier summer positioning is to continued box office success, which screws the (very) late summer release, Superbad. The other is how much Superbad has fallen behind its peers after a brilliant start.
American Wedding fell 19.7% to $3.616 million on its first Wednesday. This represents a decline of 28.1% from its Monday total of $5.028 million. So, the news for Superbad is not all bad. It beats American Wedding across the board in our three measurables. Anchorman earned $3.563 million, a drop of 5.4% from its Tuesday total of $3.767 million. This is a fall of 16.9% from its Monday earnings of $4.288 million. So, the only spot where Superbad beats Anchorman is in terms of actual dollars. Next up is The Break-Up. It fell 6.8% to $3.375 million on Wednesday, an overall decline of 13.8% from its first Monday. Again, Superbad only wins in terms of actual dollars. That's two losses and one win for Superbad thus far, which puts it in Matt Millen/Detroit Lions territory. Let's look at the other four.
Dodgeball earned $4.008 million on its first Wednesday. That's a drop of 23.3% from its first Tuesday of $5.226 million while also representing a Monday-Wednesday decline of 27.9%. The 40 Year-Old Virgin earned $2.605 million, a decline of 10.3% from Tuesday and 13.6% from Monday. Wedding Crashers, the star pupil in this group, earned $4.91 million on its first Wednesday. That's a fall of 10.0% on Wednesday, but an increase of 6.5% from its first Monday of $4.61 million. As you can see, Superbad isn't doing well against any of these, either.
That leaves us with the one film released in 2007, the one that also stars one of the talents in Superbad, Seth Rogen. That title is Knocked Up, and it made $3.362 million on its first Wednesday. That's a decline of 11.9% from its first Tuesday of $4.120 million and an 18.1% drop from its first Monday of $4.436 million. So, let's compare the numbers of Superbad directly to Knocked Up. Superbad earned more on its first Wednesday with $3,853,382; however, it had a steeper decline of 19.0% as opposed to Knocked Up's far superior holdover of 11.9%. Similarly, Knocked Up's 18.1% Monday-Wednesday drop smokes Superbad's 29.2% drop. If we are prioritizing the three stats, Superbad wins the one that matters most, actual dollars. Despite this, the other measurable where it lags behind Knocked Up as well as the rest of the titles mentioned here is troubling. Superbad had tremendous momentum from Friday to Monday. Most of it is gone now, though.
The top ten had combined revenues of $12,048,801. This total represents a 17.5% drop of from Tuesday's $14,609,942. What we are seeing is that without Superbad's strength to carry the top ten, there isn't much support otherwise. Then again, this total is still 77.0% better than 2006's top ten of $8.254 million for the same Wednesday. So, the summer of 2007 is still offering scintillating performances across the board.