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It's just better on Friday

Kim Hollis: Sex and the City had earned $26.9 million out of its $55.7 million by end of business on Friday. Does everyone agree that this is going to be one of the most front-loaded films of the year or do you think that Friday's stunning performance is simply skewing results?

Max Braden: Saturday's dropoff is shocking. I have heard a lot of people saying they'll see it next weekend, so it may see a bump.

Tim Briody: A final take of under $100 million actually wouldn't shock me. The decline over the weekend was just too much and it doesn't strike me as much of a weeknight film, either.

Pete Kilmer: It was totally front loaded and I will be surprised if it hits $140 at the end of its run.

Joel Corcoran: It's definitely front-loaded, and I expect to see the same cycles over the next weekend or two. I expect it to do about $28 million this coming weekend with about half of that on Friday night, and I think it has a good shot to finish just over $100 million total.

Reagen Sulewski: I think there's a tendency to view intra- and second-weekend drop-offs as an indication of whether or not it was a good idea to make a particular film, or its quality, or its potential for a sequel. In most cases, there's at least something to that, but this is really just reflective of the size of its audience, and their rabidity. And really, should we be surprised that a film about a bunch of style-obsessed self-absorbed socialites is going to be here today and gone tomorrow like whatever fashion trend is the current rave?





David Mumpower: If we evaluate Sex and the City in terms of percentage drops and final box office multipliers, it won't shine. If we neutralize the empirical data a bit, however, this is not a gloom and doom scenario moving forward. Yet. The title earned roughly $29 million once we remove Thursday midnight sneaks and Friday results. A month ago, if we were discussing a Sex and the City opening of $29 million - a superior performance to The Devil Wears Prada - we would have been hailing its success. From here on in, the film still has the same positive factors for it that any title in the genre would. It skews heavily female (85% of all ticket sales were women), a group that historically does not rush out on day one to see a title. The movie also has the huge positive of being perceived as a blockbuster. That props up its interest even further. So, there are positives here about why the title could show legs. I'm not convinced it will, but I feel it's important that we keep in mind that it's the $26.9 million Friday that is skewing things here. The film shouldn't be punished for its own success. If it earns $20 million next weekend, it's far from a flameout. Anything less than that would be...well, we'll save that for next week's discussion.

Reagen Sulewski: I think you're generally right here, but I also view Friday's results as a kind of one-time bonus. As you said earlier, there were a lot of people convinced to go early because of the party aspect, but I'll go even further and say that there were some who weren't even necessarily fans of the show who went because of the hype. Especially when you consider the kind of people the show is aimed at.

So I see it having terrible legs, but that's only because it started on a pedestal.

David Mumpower: That is the point I intended to make. If we judge it with Friday included, it will come up short using any accepted box office measurable. If we just accept that as a one time bonus and start evaluating it from Saturday on, I don't see its legs as being catastrophically bad.

Kim Hollis: I think it falls off the face of the Earth next weekend. It's a total fangirl film if you look at the behavior of the audience that went to see it, especially when you consider the mass groups that attended together.

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