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Thursday's box office sees Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End make a strong step toward regaining the number one spot, but it falls just short. With a blockbuster new opener today in the form of Ocean's Thirteen, the pirate booty will not include any further appearances at the top of the charts until the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: Johnny Depp Buys an Island.

In the interim, here's how Thursday played out. At World's End earned $3,327,937 while Knocked Up barely edges that mark with $3,345,555. The third Jack Sparrow outing has crossed the $230 million threshold with a running total of $232,297,818. Meanwhile, Knocked Up finished its first week of box office with an impressive total of $46,223,940. Pirates fell only 4.3% on Thursday, while Knocked Up declined 7.9%.

Continuing the pattern of comparing Knocked Up to similar summer comedies, here is how it stands for its first Thursday. Wedding Crashers fell 4.7% to $4.68 million. The 40 Year-Old Virgin fell 9.9% to $2.35 million. American Wedding fell 10.5% to $3.24 million. The Break-Up fell 6.8% to $3.15 million. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy fell 13.8% to $3.07 million. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story fell 5.0% to $3.81 million. So, Knocked Up's Thursday was third out of these seven titles in terms of actual box office dollars with its $3.34 million. The depreciation, on the other hand, was only good for fourth best behind Dodgeball, Wedding Crashers and The Break-Up. So, Knocked Up's Thursday decline is the median percentage of the batch.

With a full set of weekday numbers in the books, we may now compare it to the other six titles in terms of weekend to weekday holdover. We are going to coin a new phrase here, and that term is "weekday ratio". What I mean when I use this terminology is what percentage of a movie's opening weekend of box office it is able to maintain on the following four weekdays. Obviously, a bigger number is preferred with regards to weekday ratio. Here is the data:

The Break-Up's first four weekdays of box office were $14,427,465 after an opening weekend of $39,172,785. That's a weekday ratio of 36.8%, easily the poorest daily holdover performance of the group.

American Wedding's first four weekdays of box office were $16,381,560 after an opening weekend of $33,369,440. That's a weekday ratio of 49.1%.

The 40 Year-Old Virgin's first four weekdays of box office were $10,869,265 after an opening weekend of $21,422,815. That's a weekday ratio of 50.7%.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy's first four weekdays of box office were $14,680,635 after an opening weekend of $28,416,365. That's a weekday ratio of 51.7%.

Wedding Crashers' first four weekdays of box office were $20,800,719 after an opening weekend of $33,900,720. That's a weekday ratio of 61.4%.

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story's first four weekdays of box office were $18,600,804 after an opening weekend of $30,070,196. That's a weekday ratio of 61.9%.

Knocked Up's first four weekdays of box office stand at $15,532,950 after an opening weekend of $30,690,990. That's a weekday ratio of 50.6%. This is third worst out of the group, albeit in a virtual dead heat with The 40 Year-Old Virgin in terms of percentage decline. So, its box office performance continues to behave exactly as expected by the model of these other six titles. A 40% drop is my expectation for the weekend, which would give it box office of $18.4 million. Anything well above this number would indicate a juggernaut in terms of word-of-mouth appeal. Anything well below this would lower it to Anchorman's territory of the $80 million range instead of the still-magical $100 million barrier.

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