Weekend Forecast for July 27-29, 2007

By Reagen Sulewski

July 27, 2007

That monkey really should have stayed away from her blocks.

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The final new film of the weekend is Who's Your Caddy, a hip-hop riff on Caddyshack, starring Big Boi of Outkast. He takes on the Rodney Dangerfield role, playing a rap mogul trying to join an elite country club, but being dissed by The Man. Stereotypes and golf related wackiness ensue.

Even for a narrowly targeted film like this, the 1,019 screens its opening on are pretty small, about two-thirds of what something like Soul Plane opened on. This one honestly seems like it barely avoided the fate of straight-to-video, and should be good for just $3 million this weekend.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry managed to hold off the second weekend of Harry Potter to win the top spot at the box office, with $34 million, a slightly off total for an Adam Sandler, but still quite good for a comedy in general. The "faux-mosexual marriage" issue, in my opinion, kept a number of Sandler's fans away, though perhaps the promise of Jessica Biel in her underwear and/or a cat suit held on to a few of them. I expect very little in the way of legs for this film, with about $18 million in this frame.




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Although the 58% drop for the second weekend of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix looks troubling on first glance, there's very little to worry about for the Hogwarts crew. Although my prediction for it to retain the top spot proved optimistic, this is less of a drop than the last Potter film released in the summer, and its box office total already stands at $225 million, just $25 million short of Azkaban's total. There's still a moderate chance for it to hit $300 million total, which would make it the first film in the series to do so since the initial outing. I expect a mild recovery this weekend, with a drop to $19 million for Phoenix.

Hairspray was the big surprise of the weekend, earning $27 million, enough for third place. The movie-to-musical-to-movie-musical, based on the John Waters film about the segregation era capitalized on a youth movement towards musicals, and was helped by reviews pegging it as one of the better examples of the genre. Its weekday numbers have been strong, but the weekend was strangely front-loaded, with Friday being its best day overall. I think legs will be just okay for this one, despite the rapturous reviews, with a second weekend of close to $16 million.

Rounding out the significant films still in release, Transformers should add another $11 million to its total this weekend, as it moves ever more assuredly towards the $300 million mark, a potentially record-breaking fourth film of the year to do so. Ratatouille is in line for about $7 million this weekend, aiming at $200 million itself. And finally two films make a leap into more moderate release, Rescue Dawn and Sunshine. Sunshine is the more promising from a box office standpoint, being the latest film from Danny Boyle, and featuring a high-concept sci-fi setting. In 450 screens, it may earn about $3 million, while Rescue Dawn's war setting (directed by Werner Herzog) should see about $1 million on around the same number.


Forecast: Weekend of July 27-29, 2007
Rank
Film
Number of
Sites
Changes in Sites
from Last
Estimated
Gross ($)
1 The Simpsons Movie 3,922 New 54.4
2 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 4,005 -280 18.9
3 I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry 3,501 +6 17.5
4 Hairspray 3,121 0 15.5
5 Transformers 3,349 -413 11.1
6 No Reservations 2,425 New 8.3
7 Ratatouille 2,934 -468 7.2
8 Live Free or Die Hard 2,271 -456 4.2
9 Sunshine 460 +450 2.9
10 Who's Your Caddy? 1,019 New 2.9

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