Twelve Days of Box Office: Day Ten
Friday Numbers Analysis
By Tim Briody
December 30, 2006
BoxOfficeProphets.com

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There's nothing all that shocking in Friday's box office that hasn't already been discussed throughout this week: Night at the Museum is a huge smash, The Pursuit of Happyness is also very quietly doing well, Dreamgirls is turning into a head scratcher and Charlotte's Web is slowly redeeming itself. What we will use this particular column to discuss is that this weekend will be a virtual carbon copy of last weekend.

While this weekend is the final run of the holiday box office money train (every one of the usual suspects in the top ten has had an increase from last Friday, with the exception of Rocky Balboa), there is one big caveat: much like Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve is also an anti-box office holiday. While Saturday should be just as solid as last week and Monday will end the holiday with a big hurrah, Sunday's figures are going to pretty much suck. BOP firmly believes in looking at the past to predict the future. So, for the curious, here are the New Year's weekend multipliers for the top ten films playing in theaters six years ago. As a reminder, this was the last time we had the same calendar configuration as 2006.

Cast Away 2.72
What Women Want 2.73
Miss Congeniality 2.62
The Family Man 2.67
Emperor's New Groove 2.50
How the Grinch Stole Christmas 2.31
Vertical Limit 2.65
Dracula 2000 2.38
Dude, Where's My Car 2.28
All the Pretty Horses 2.86

As you can see, it's an especially miserable weekend to be a holiday film, a kids' movie or an Ashton Kutcher movie (and is there ever really a good time to be one of those?). Remember, everything will come roaring back on Monday as we then fall back to Earth. Starting on January 2nd, everyone goes back to work and/or school, causing box office to return to normal.

So what's going to be affected the most on Sunday? Night at the Museum has the most to lose being the highest earning film, though expect to see Charlotte's Web drop a few spots down to the lower end of the top ten, as well as Happy Feet. Overall, the weekend will be still be stronger than Christmas weekend.

John Hamann will have the full details tomorrow, and of course Box Office Prophets will be here for the new year to wrap up our Twelve Days of Box Office.