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Today's column was intended to focus upon the scintillating debut of Balls of Fury. After all, it has been heavily marketed for months and has a couple of truly hilarious moments in the trailer. Apparently, I am in the minority with this opinion, however, as North America's response to the debut of Balls of Fury was a resounding shrug.

Recovering members of The State, Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, caught lightning in a bottle with their 2006 release, Night at the Museum. The Ben Stiller comedy earned $250.9 million, making it the second most successful title of the year after Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. They even followed this up with Reno 911! Miami, a movie that opened to $10.3 million before vanishing out of theaters with only $20.3 million. So, there was cause for optimism about the opening five days of Balls of Fury...right up until theater reports trickled in yesterday. At this point, everyone realized that it was a dud, at least on Wednesday.

Balls of Fury earned an estimated $1.7 million yesterday from 2,810 venues, giving it a per-location average of $605. Keep in mind that if you want to compare this to the weekend venue averages we discuss in the Weekend Wrap-Up each Sunday, you have to triple the number. So, this would be on a par of an $1,815 per-location weekend average. Stating the obvious, that's dreadful. Balls of Fury should have about $2.7 million heading into the weekend, give or take a couple hundred thousand. Its presence in the marketplace appears...unwelcome.

Daily Box Office for Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Rank	Film	Distributor	Daily Gross	Daily Change	Weekly Change	Running Total
1	Superbad	Sony/Columbia	$1,880,985	- 13.9%	- 51.2%	$75,100,676
2	Balls of Fury	Rogue Pictures	$1,700,000	New	New	$1,700,000
3	The Bourne Ultimatum	Universal	$979,275	- 9.9%	- 47.6%	$188,423,035
4	Rush Hour 3	New Line Cinema	$800,000	- 18.8%	- 59.4%	$111,250,000
5	Mr. Bean's Holiday	Universal	$694,170	- 22.1%	N/A	$12,331,970
6	War	Lionsgate	$680,161	- 17.4%	N/A	$12,263,473
7	The Nanny Diaries	MGM, The Weinstein Company	$626,304	- 14.1%	N/A	$9,547,731
8	Stardust	Paramount	$401,236	- 5.4%	- 43.9%	$27,608,856
9	Hairspray	New Line Cinema	$390,000	- 6.0%	- 50.6%	$108,470,000
10	The Simpsons Movie	Twentieth Century Fox	$350,310	- 17.1%	- 59.0%	$174,567,063
Box office data supplied by Exhibitor Relations