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In addition, the other factor to consider is that it's easier to have a higher WWM if the number at the start is lower. Remember that seemingly innocuous cheap shot I took at Herbie: Fully Reloaded above? It was slipped in for a reason. You'll notice that movie had a startling WWM of 4.7 despite being a financial disaster all the way around. Given the fact that it's easier to spike the WWM if the numbers start lower, I'm going out on a limb here by saying that it could do as much as a 3.75 WWM (yes, higher than almost all of the examples listed above), which would mean an opening weekend of $34.1 million.

Given the data points in this column, however, I totally understand if you want to hedge your bets by expecting a much lower total. A 3.2 WWM would a disappointing $29.1 million opening weekend and if we go much lower than that, say 2.7 WWM) would take it all the way under $24.6 million. Fortunately, we will have a much better idea of what will happen after tomorrow's numbers. See, this is a bait and switch. I'm forcing you to come back tomorrow to see for sure.

The rest of the top ten today clearly is not the story, but I do want to make a couple of points. The first is that these films combined to earn $22,353,083 yesterday. Sure, Live Free Or Die Hard represents almost 41% of that total, but it's still the largest weekday of June 2007. Given that the number one film is likely to drop 50% tomorrow, that total will stand as the monthly winner. Of course, when we look at some of the single movie, single Wednesday performances listed above, it doesn't seem quite so exciting.

The other point of note I want to make circles back to our initial discussions at the start of the month. You may recall (and you scare me if you do) that the tenth place film for June 14th was Gracie, which earned a pitiful $82,054. I mentioned at the time that this situation would work itself out as the bottom of the top ten became filled with much stronger titles. That has come to fruition today as the tenth place title, Shrek the Third, still manages a solid $834,439. That's a factor of ten better than what the bottom of the top ten was managing just two weeks ago. There are also seven films making at least a million dollars a day right now as opposed to only five at this point two weeks ago. Next week, these numbers are going to seem pitiful, too. The July 4th holiday is going to spike all the weekdays.

Daily Box Office for Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Rank	Film	Distributor	Daily Gross	Daily Change	Weekly Change	Running Total
1	Live Free or Die Hard	Twentieth Century Fox	$9,111,638	N/A	N/A	$9,111,638
2	Evan Almighty	Universal	$3,370,505	- 8.8%	N/A	$42,185,605
3	1408	Dimension Films	$1,999,479	- 16.4%	N/A	$27,791,588
4	Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer	Twentieth Century Fox	$1,870,790	- 15.3%	- 58.1%	$103,920,678
5	Knocked Up	Universal	$1,315,140	- 12.4%	- 34.9%	$113,687,320
6	Ocean's Thirteen	Warner Bros.	$1,101,391	- 19.7%	- 51.4%	$94,974,313
7	Surf's Up	Sony/Columbia	$1,020,754	- 2.9%	- 37.1%	$50,283,003
8	Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End	Walt Disney Pictures	$887,597	- 8.2%	- 36.8%	$289,838,885
9	Nancy Drew	Warner Bros.	$841,350	+ 4.1%	- 33.5%	$18,503,257
10	Shrek the Third	DreamWorks	$834,439	0.0%	- 35.9%	$310,249,415
Box office data supplied by Exhibitor Relations

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