Friday Box Office Analysis

By Tim Briody

June 28, 2008

She's fantasizing abot having sex with me.

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Once again, it's Pixar's (beautifully animated) world, we just live in it.

WALL-E

The latest offering from animation wizards Pixar opened to $23.3 million, the best opening day ever for anything they've ever released. Releases such as Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo have had stronger second days, but this tops all first day totals.

WALL-E is the third straight Pixar film to see a summer release, and that has caused lower weekend multipliers than you might normally expect, thanks to the increased availability of its target audience (basically everybody) to see it on Friday. Cars had a 3.05 two years ago and last year's Ratatouille could only manage a 2.85.

I think a 3.0 weekend multiplier is the best that it could hope for, and a smidge lower is probably where it will end up, so I would give WALL-E a solid $68.7 million for the weekend.




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Wanted

The stylish-looking thriller starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy is surprisingly not that far behind WALL-E on Friday with $19 million. This is an excellent total, especially for a summer that has so far seen its share of disappointments and there were perhaps some indicators that Wanted could follow suit. The weekend multiplier probably won't be as strong as WALL-E's, though, so the overall weekend estimate gap could be a big larger. Still, even with a 2.7 multiplier, $51.3 million is absolutely nothing to sneeze at here.

Notable Holdovers

Get Smart falls 51% from last Friday to $6.5 million. One could have hoped that bigger legs were in store for it, but the remainder of the weekend will bring the decline to under 50% so everyone involved should be pretty happy about that. Look for about $20 million in weekend two.

Time to once again pile on The Love Guru, as Mike Myers' comedy flop plunges 65% from last Friday's opening. Sadly, the news this week of the Verne Troyer sex tape did nothing to help his movie. Figure a little over $5 million for the weekend.


Projected Estimates for the Top Ten (Three-Day)
Projected
Rank
Film
Estimated Gross
1 WALL-E 68.7
2 Wanted 51.3
3 Get Smart 20.1
4 Kung Fu Panda 12.1
5 The Incredible Hulk 9.5
6 The Love Guru 5.0
7 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 5.0
8 Sex and the City 3.7
9 The Happening 3.7
10 You Don't Mess With the Zohan 3.1

     


 
 

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