Friday Numbers Analysis
By David Mumpower
May 22, 2004
The game of one-upmanship between Pixar and DreamWorks reached a new high on Friday as Shrek 2 earned a sensational $27.9 million. This total virtually equals the $28.0 million that Finding Nemo had on its best day, meaning that any increase whatsoever in Saturday box office will give Shrek 2 the biggest single-day box office total ever for an animated release. A shattering of Finding Nemo’s weekend record of $70.2 million is a virtual certainty as well, meaning that DreamWorks has regained the throne…at least until The Incredibles arrives in theaters on November 5th.
As the only opener this weekend, Shrek 2 had its pick of venues across the country, and DreamWorks decided to take pretty much all of them. The term ultra-wide has been applied to any release exhibited in more than 3,000 venues. Shrek 2 destroyed this prior level of market saturation by being available for viewing in an astonishing 4,163 venues, a mark that shatters the prior venue-count record by roughly 400. I guess we need to come up with new terminology beyond ultra-wide. How about double-wide?
Of course, having 4,163 theaters showing your movie is useless unless people show up to watch the damn thing. In the case of Shrek 2, Friday’s number is indicative of a lot of patient parents eschewing the early showings on Wednesday and Thursday (when the film managed roughly $21 million) in order to enjoy the film over the weekend. Had kids been out of school, the mid-week release would make more sense but as it stands, there is little justification for what effectively became two days' worth of sneaks. Instead, everyone was like Loverboy, working for the weekend. When Friday came, audiences showed up en masse, indicating that there was ample demand to meet the unprecedented supply.
What’s left then is to determine exactly how well the film will do on Saturday and Sunday. The original Shrek had an internal multiplier of 3.67, but it’s important to note that Shrek’s first Friday was only $11.5 million. Since the sequel has more than doubled that total, such a lofty multiplier would be a tricky feat to accomplish. Note that I’m not saying it’s impossible, because a release like Shrek 2 is designed for such feats. Run length and product availability means that any patient consumer who is inclined to see the film on opening weekend will have the opportunity to do so.
A better comparison for Shrek 2 might be Finding Nemo, which had a 3.48 internal multiplier on a $20.2 million Friday. If Shrek 2 sees a similar weekend performance, we are looking at a near-$100 million tally and over $120 million in the first five days of release. I find that a tad ambitious, even for a family film. As the first-day numbers get higher (and $27.9 million is one of the 20 largest single-day tallies in box office history), percentage spikes become harder to pull off. Whereas Nemo only had to jump $7.8 million to see a 38.6% spike, Shrek 2 would need $10.8 million (i.e. a full $3 million more) just to match the same percentage increase. Keeping this in mind, I’m going to use a 3.25 multiplier to extrapolate the weekend box office of Shrek 2. That’s a $90.7 million three-day total if it happens. Such a take would be good enough for third best opening of all time, just behind The Matrix Reloaded but well short of Spider-Man. Don’t be surprised if the numbers estimates are fudged enough tomorrow to get Shrek 2 second place, even if it doesn’t have the solid percentage spike on Saturday to justify it emperically.
Notable Holdovers:
Not that anyone noticed, but there were other releases in the top 10 yesterday. Troy fell 58.2% on its second Friday with an estimated tally of $7.1 million, but let’s not panic over the number. The 160-minute, R-rated epic should enter into a more conventional pattern of behavior in weekend two. That means a much better weekend holdover than the Friday-to-Friday tally would indicate. An expected drop of slightly less than 50% is what passes for legs these days. While the film is certainly not going to be the blockbuster WB was aiming for, it will manage to avoid the quick and brutal flameout fate being currently suffered by Van Helsing. The Hugh Jackman film’s $2.8 million Friday total is off another 57% from last Friday; it’s disappearing faster than ice in a sink full of hot water. It’s a box office non-factor after Memorial Day weekend.
Last weekend’s other opener, Breakin’ All the Rules, is down a respectable 42.3%. Don’t be fooled by the mathematical anomaly, though. It’s much harder to have a significant percentage drop when the starting point is only $1.7 million to begin with. Already down to $1.0 million, the film is likely to hemorrhage venues this Friday and wind up on video by the end of summer.
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Projected Estimates for the Top Ten (Three-Day)
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Projected
Rank |
Film |
Estimated Gross |
|
1
|
Shrek 2
|
90.7
|
|
2
|
Troy
|
23.1
|
|
3
|
Van Helsing
|
8.8
|
|
4
|
Mean Girls
|
6.6
|
|
5
|
Man on Fire
|
3.1
|
|
6
|
13 Going on 30
|
2.6
|
|
7
|
Breakin' All the Rules
|
2.4
|
|
8
|
New York Minute
|
1.1
|
|
9
|
Laws of Attraction
|
1.0
|
|
10
|
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
|
0.9
|
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