Twelve Days of Box Office: Day Seven
By David Mumpower
December 27, 2006
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Before we get too far into the numbers, however, there are two examples that are not applicable. The careful wording above indicates that in-release titles have such expected behavior. Dreamgirls and Black Christmas, however, were not in theaters last Friday. Their debuts on Christmas make their performances more complicated. We will leave those out of the equation when we discuss behavior. All you should care about with regards to these two titles is their holdover from Monday to Tuesday.
Dreamgirls debuted with a blistering $8.4 million in only 852 venues, but its momentum was slowed a bit after the holiday. The Beyonce musical fell 32% to $5.8 million on Tuesday, giving it a running tally of $15.1 million. Don't be too concerned about this decline, though. Simply recall that Rocky Balboa's drop in a similar situation last week was 45%. Also factor in the similar drop of the other December 25th opener, Black Christmas. Like the Sylvester Stallone production, it fell 45% on day two while also falling out of the top ten. $1.8 million on Tuesday gives the movie a running total of $5.1 million and also indicates that it is a box office non-factor long term. Apparently, people don't want to see a horror thriller on Christmas. Go figure.
Now that we have separated the openers from the rest of the top ten, we can go into deeper detail about the odd behavioral pattern of this week. Those of you who have been reading the other entries for the column will recall that I used two examples for prior box office comparisons. The first was 2005, the most recent year, while the other was 2000, the last time we had a similar calendar configuration to the 2006 schedule. Since the actual day of the week upon which Christmas Eve (as well as New Year's Eve...but I'm getting a couple of days ahead of myself) falls is important, it is imperative to consider the 2000 model when anticipating future behavior. Keeping this in mind, we will now take a look back at how the titles did during the post-Christmas to pre-New Year's weekday period for these titles.
The totals we are discussing for 2005 are the weekdays (Tuesday through Thursday) after December 25th but before December 31st. In this example, it's December 27-29, 2005. We also want to consider the prior Friday's performance for each film. In this example, it's December 23rd. Here is the top 10 for each date:
12/23/05
1) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: $7.9 million
2) King Kong: $7.8 million
3) Fun With Dick And Jane: $5.3 million
4) Cheaper by the Dozen 2: $3.9 million
5) Memoirs of a Geisha: $2.7 million
12/27/05
1) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: $9.2 million
2) King Kong: $7.9 million
3) Fun With Dick And Jane: $5.0 million
4) Cheaper by the Dozen 2: $4.9 million
5) Memoirs of a Geisha: $2.4 million
12/28/05
1) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: $8.8 million
2) King Kong: $7.1 million
3) Cheaper by the Dozen 2: $5.1 million
4) Fun With Dick And Jane: $4.7 million
5) Memoirs of a Geisha: $2.4 million
12/29/05
1) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: $8.9 million
2) King Kong: $7.1 million
3) Cheaper by the Dozen 2: $5.2 million
4) Fun With Dick And Jane: $4.7 million
5) Memoirs of a Geisha: $2.4 million
Notice the uncanny behavioral patterns for the titles in release. Fun with Dick and Jane never fluctuates by more than $300,000 either way. Memoirs of a Geisha winds up at $2.4 million every weekday. Cheaper by the Dozen not only offers Friday-like performance during the week but, in fact, exceeds the prior week's $3.9 million number by over a million in receipts on each of its weekdays during this time frame. King Kong offers an improved performance on Tuesday before leveling off a bit on Wednesday and Thursday due to its lackluster buzz. Even this frontloaded title performs within $800,000 of its prior Friday total with its worst weekday numbers. Narnia is the most impressive of all. Despite having the biggest Friday of any film the prior week, it still exceeds this number on each and every weekday during the crucial holiday week box office period. When a movie does better business on a Wednesday than it did the prior Friday, you know something strange is going on.
Before we accept this evidence as box office fact, however, let's cross check this data against the last calendar configuration to make sure it's not just the days of the week upon which the holidays occur that are throwing things out of whack.
The top five movies for this week in 2000 were:
Cast Away
What Women Want
Miss Congeniality
The Emperor's New Groove
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
The totals we are discussing for 2000 are again the weekdays (Tuesday through Thursday) after December 25th but before December 31st. In this example, it's December 26-28, 2000. We also again want to consider the prior Friday's performance for each film. In this example, it's December 22nd.
12/22/00
1) Cast Away: $11.8 million
2) What Women Want: $6.1 million
3) Miss Congeniality: $4.2 million
4) How the Grinch Stole Christmas: $3.9 million
5) The Emperor's New Groove: $2.5 million
12/26/00
1) Cast Away: $11.7 million
2) What Women Want: $6.9 million
3) Miss Congeniality: $4.7 million
4) The Emperor's New Groove: $3.6 million
5) How the Grinch Stole Christmas: $3.3 million
12/27/00
1) Cast Away: $9.3 million
2) What Women Want: $6.1 million
3) Miss Congeniality: $4.3 million
4) The Emperor's New Groove: $4.0 million
5) How the Grinch Stole Christmas: $3.0 million
12/28/00
1) Cast Away: $8.8 million
2) What Women Want: $6.1 million
3) The Emperor's New Groove: $4.4 million
4) Miss Congeniality: $4.3 million
5) How the Grinch Stole Christmas: $2.9 million
Note the uniform behavior by all of the films but Cast Away. What Women Want scores $6.1 million three out of four days. Miss Congeniality stays within a $400,000 range throughout the time frame, making more on each of the weekdays than it had on the prior Friday. The Emperor's New Groove not only exceeds the prior Friday on its weekdays but does so by as much as 60%. How the Grinch Stole Christmas experiences the most deviation of any title here yet it still never fluctuates by more than $1 million over these four days. The only movie that sees any significant drop at all is Cast Away.
Having now studied both data samples and verified the integrity of the premise, we can now proceed with confidence in anticipating future behavior. Keeping this in mind, peruse the chart below to see Monday's tallies for the rest of the top ten. Effectively, what you have with these numbers is a blueprint for how the rest of the week will go the films in the top ten. It's just that easy.
Finally, for those of you who left feedback asking about the significance of The Love Letter's release date, you focused too much on its exact debut date of May 21, 1999. The key was not this date but instead what it represented: The Love Letter was sacrificed to the box office gods as an offering to George Lucas. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace debuted two days prior and dominated the opening weekend wherein The Love Letter was rendered into a trivia sidenote. Thanks for playing!