Friday Box Office Analysis

By Tim Briody

May 29, 2004

God weighs in on his feelings about the iniquity of Hollywood.

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The Day After Tomorrow earned $24.3 million yesterday. That and more confusing statements ahead!

The Day After Tomorrow

Yes, the disaster epic is indeed a smash right out of the gate, with a remarkable first day total of $24.3 million. Last year's Memorial Day champ, Bruce Almighty, started off with $20.8 million on its way to $86.4 million over the four-day weekend. I don't expect The Day Afer Tomorrow to duplicate that 4.15 internal multiplier, though it will still be a rather impressive opening (albeit just short of $100 million for the four days). The Day After Tomorrow looks to earn $97.2 million over the holiday weekend.

Raising Helen

Kate Hudson's romantic comedy got of to an very solid start with an estimated $3.6 million on Friday. Movies that aren't earning tens of millions of dollars a day during this weekend can have internal mulipliers in the mid-fours and up. That said, Raising Helen should finish the weekend with around $16.9 million.

Soul Plane

The Snoop Dogg-led spoof took in just under $2 million Friday, and I get the distinct feeling Soul Plane will have a much longer life on DVD. Give it $9 million over the four days.

Shrek 2

I'm not sure what's more impressive - that Shrek 2 only fell 27.7% from last Friday, or that by doing so, it still earned $20.5 million yesterday. The numbers were just too large this time around for a repeat of Shrek's performance over its second weekend (when it had an increase of 0.3% over the three-day weekend alone), but Shrek 2 will break $200 million today, and will have very nearly passed the first film's gross by Monday. It's astounding and basically unprecedented.

Over the Memorial Day weekend in 2000, Shrek had a mind-numbing multiplier of 5.58. Since the figures are more or less twice as large now, I'm going to give Shrek 2 an extremely conservative multiplier of 5, which places it at an astonishing $102.5 million.


Projected Estimates for the Top Ten (Four-Day)
Projected
Rank
Film
Estimated Gross (M$)
1 Shrek 2 102.5
2 The Day After Tomorrow 97.2
3 Raising Helen 16.9
4 Troy 15.6
5 Soul Plane 9.0
6 Van Helsing 6.4
7 Mean Girls 6.5
8 Man on Fire 2.4
9 Super Size Me 1.4
10 13 Going on 30 1.3

     


 
 

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