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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban displays somewhat similar behavior. After starting its week with $8.428 million, it fell 14.0% to $7.247 million on Tuesday then arrived at $6.878 million on Wednesday. That decline of 5.1% on Wednesday is quite a bit better than what Chamber of Secrets managed; however, its Tuesday decline is quite a bit worse. The rules are still the same, though. Both films fell between 18% and 24% from Monday-to-Wednesday; each one also declined on Tuesday as well as Wednesday. These are the facts that matter for our purposes.

Keeping them in mind, let's now take a look at what Order of the Phoenix has done. After starting the weekdays with what we determined to be an impressive $10,415,480 on Monday, the latest Potter flick fell 12.0% to $9,169,473 on Tuesday. We also determined that this hold-over was quite strong, giving Warner Bros. solid cause to believe Order of the Phoenix will show great legs. How, then, did it do on Wednesday? Another $8,438,206 in the coffers indicates Tuesday-to-Wednesday depreciation of 8.0%. In addition, the overall decline from Monday-to-Wednesday is 19.0%, right in line with the totals listed above for Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban. This is despite the fact that Order of the Phoenix is dealing with larger numbers, which, as we have discussed countless times before, makes it more difficult to maintain the same percentage hold-over.

The only comparison left to make is the Transformers one. We have already seen that the Michael Bay CGI-fest did a slightly better job in terms of pure depreciation percentages. Then again, we have also ceded that larger numbers are more difficult to maintain; ergo, a 75.9% drop from $27.851 million is not necessarily better than an 80.9% drop from the ninth largest single day ever, $44.232 million. Instead, the better way to evaluate the titles is Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday behavior in their second weekends, something we have done quite a bit this week.

Transformers started its second set of weekdays with $9.928 million then fell 16.9% to $8.254 million on Tuesday. Its second Wednesday total of $7.003 million represents a drop 15.2% from Tuesday. More importantly for our purposes, it is a decline of 29.5% from Monday-to-Wednesday. The 19% managed by Order of the Phoenix is vastly superior to this.

Now, some would argue that this is expected behavior given that the fifth Harry Potter title is more of a family/children's film than Transformers. Those titles should do better on weekdays during the summer when kids are out of school. I am not one to believe this argument, though. I believe that Transformers skews just as young as Potter and is subject to the same sort of weekday carryover appeal. Given the legs it has demonstrated thus far, this opinion has been born out by the data. Transformers is not flaming out. Another $4,508,457 on Wednesday gives it a running total of $238,202,379, and it represents a decline of only 35.6% from the prior Wednesday as well as a 5.0% drop from Tuesday. Admittedly, the 35.6% fall and the 5.0% drops are the second largest out of the top ten for both week and daily comparisons, but it is still a respectable holdover. There is nothing wrong with Transformers thus far. It is just getting beaten early on by Order of the Phoenix.

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