Daily Box Office Analysis for December 11, 2007
By David Mumpower
December 12, 2007
Box office for Tuesday, December 11th offered nothing by way of surprise. Given Monday results and past box office behavior during previous Decembers, it was safe to anticipate steady performances for the titles in release. The top ten titles in release during the second weekend of December in 2006 almost universally saw increases from Monday to Tuesday. Nine out of ten titles saw moderate growth in the range of 4% to 12%. The only title to not sustain growth was the major opener, Apocalypto. The Mel Gibson epic fell 11.2% from $1.51 million to $1.34 million.
2007 bears witness to eerily similar performances. Nine out of ten titles in the top ten on Tuesday saw increases from the previous day. There is one caveat to this as 9" target="new">American Gangster actually was not in the top ten on Monday, but a growth of 4.9% catapults it over The Mist for a place in the list. The other eight non-opener titles had gains in the range of 1.7% to 17.4%. Fred Claus was the winner of the biggest increase inside of the top ten, which is not surprising. With so many families off during the holidays, weekdays are much better than usual for films that cater to them than what be the case on an ordinary weekday throughout the year. Titles such as this will continue to hum along throughout the rest of the month.
The big discussion point this week, of course, is The Golden Compass. The title fell from an estimated $1.7 million on Monday to $1.645 million on Tuesday. This is a moderate decline of 3.3%, which certainly beats the Apocalypto example listed above. I also discussed the second week of Daniel Craig's last December blockbuster, Casino Royale, in yesterday's column. That title experienced growth of 7.4% on its second Tuesday. So, The Golden Compass has a good news/bad news situation here. It falls squarely in the middle between the two extremes.
Box office for the top ten saw an increase of 3.3% from $4,836,939 Monday to $4,998,880 yesterday. This is not quite as much of a spike as we saw in 2006, but it is again eerily similar. The same Monday last year saw receipts of $6,280,422 followed by an increase of 3.5% to $6,500,293 on Tuesday. So, box office behavior for the two time periods has been basically replicated.
| 1 |
His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass |
New Line Cinema |
$1,645,000 |
- 3.2% |
N/A |
$29,145,000 |
| 2 |
Enchanted |
Walt Disney Pictures |
$629,231 |
+ 8.2% |
- 22.4% |
$85,079,388 |
| 3 |
Beowulf |
Paramount |
$480,690 |
+ 5.9% |
- 29.1% |
$77,054,450 |
| 4 |
No Country for Old Men |
Paramount |
$475,000 |
+ 9.2% |
+ 6.7% |
$29,655,000 |
| 5 |
Hitman |
Twentieth Century Fox |
$352,509 |
+ 4.1% |
- 30.1% |
$36,513,866 |
| 6 |
Fred Claus |
Warner Bros. |
$303,292 |
+ 17.4% |
+ 6.2% |
$66,098,566 |
| 7 |
August Rush |
Warner Bros. |
$301,443 |
+ 11.1% |
- 17.0% |
$25,706,309 |
| 8 |
Awake |
MGM, The Weinstein Company |
$294,844 |
+ 2.1% |
- 27.4% |
$11,326,946 |
| 9 |
This Christmas |
Sony/Columbia |
$271,876 |
+ 1.7% |
- 21.0% |
$43,260,550 |
| 10 |
American Gangster |
Universal |
$244,995 |
N/A |
- 27.6% |
$126,032,120 |
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Box office data supplied by Exhibitor Relations
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