Daily Box Office Analysis for August 8, 2007

By David Mumpower

August 9, 2007

Cuba and friend have an appropriate reaction to Daddy Day Care's first day receipts.

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The other two titles of interest with regards to The Bourne Ultimatum comparisons are Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and The Simpsons Movie. Potter fell 8.0% from $9,169,473 on its first Tuesday to $8,438,206 on its first Wednesday. Matt Groening's animated crew fell from $7,501,425 on its first Tuesday to $6,406,944 on its first Wednesday, a drop of 14.6%. This marks the first direct weekday-to-weekday comparison wherein Bourne beats The Simpsons, albeit by only $327,266. It's good news that the title is finally surpassing another that has proven to be so heavily front-loaded. Even so, it still lags behind Potters in terms of intra-week holdover. It is, however, holding its own against Transformers, which is a nice sign. It's going to be the only one of the four titles that does not break the $100 million barrier in seven days or less, though.

Speaking of The Simpsons Movie, it earned $3,080,934 yesterday, giving it a grand total of $138,480,147 after 13 days in release. I would like to make the point about how front-loaded it is by comparing it to the other $70 million openers on the list that came before it. Unfortunately, we know from prior discussions that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as well as Transformers both had mid-week openings. So, it would require some backtracking to find the right numbers for comparison. That could prove off-putting to some readers. Oh, what the hell. Let's try it anyway.

From the period of its first Friday to 13 days later on a Wednesday, Transformers earned $153,299,351. Keep in mind that its running total as of that point was $238,202,379, but that includes an additional three (and a half) days of box office that would skew the data. We are only concerned about what it did in direct day-to-day comparisons with The Simpsons Movie and, as you can see, it's roughly $14.8 million ahead. For the same time frame, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix accrued box office receipts totaling $158,392,022. That's even better than the Transformers by roughly $5.1 million and represents a total 14.4% larger than what The Simpsons Movie has managed in the same time frame.




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Here is the alarming thought, though. Both titles mentioned as comparison for The Simpsons Movie got their starts during the middle of the week. Transformers actually started with Monday sneaks at 8 p.m. while Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix debuted on a Wednesday. So, each of these titles should have had great issues with demand being met earlier in the release cycle than The Simpsons Movie has faced. Few of the consumers who showed up prior to the first weekend for either title would have been likely to return from that point forward. Yes, there is a small segment of customers who are willing to give repeat viewings to quality titles (I'm one of them, in fact), but it's a very small group at its core. So, almost all of the people who saw Transformers and Potter prior to their first weekends were customers whose business was not factored into our little equation. As such, these titles should have had smaller numbers in the following 13 days. The fact that they did not is a strong indictment against what The Simpsons Movie has done since opening weekend.


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