By David Parker

Every now and then, a weekend comes along that makes me doubt I've ever had any skill in predicting movie openings. This is one of those weekends. Minority Report, the first Steven Spielberg/Tom Cruise collaboration, failed to earn $12 million on Friday. Instead, Lilo & Stitch held that honor pulling in $12.3 million on Friday.

I should have seen this coming for Minority Report. You see, I was standing in front of an elaborate gumball machine, when all of a sudden out of one of the unnecessarily long plastic tubes comes this red wooden ball. Printed on the ball in black letters were the words Minority Report. I thought it was a clever marketing ploy until another red wooden ball came out of a different unnecessarily long plastic tube. That ball said 20th Century Fox Marketing Department. Really, though, how else can you explain a Spielberg/Cruise sci-fi summer film not opening to at least $40 million? Looks like the Pre-Crime Division failed to stop this murder.

Minority Report

Minority Report earned an estimated $11.35 million on Friday. It should behave very similarly to Spielberg's AI and get about a 2.95 internal multiplier. That would give the 20th Century Fox film a disappointing $33.5 million for the weekend. Even though the budget for Minority Report is said to have been $80 million, it still needs monster legs if it's going to be very profitable for Fox, considering Cruise's and Spielberg's back-end deals. This opening still has me shaking my head.

Internal Multiplier Comparisons for Minority Report
Film	Multiplier
A.I.	2.99
Planet of the Apes	2.78
Rush Hour 2	2.92
Hollow Man	2.91

Lilo & Stitch

Internal Multiplier Comparisons for Lilo & Stitch
Film	Multiplier
Atlantis	3.13
Tarzan	2.99
Scooby-Doo	2.82
Mulan	2.85
Hercules	3.03

Juwanna Man

Internal Multiplier Comparisons for Juwanna Man
Film	Multiplier
Pootie Tang	2.9
The Wood	3.05

Notable Holdovers

The Bourne Identity dropped 46.8% from last Friday. A 41% drop for the weekend would bring in around $16 million for the Matt Damon spy thriller. Universal has to hope for smaller weekend and weekday drop-offs if it wants The Bourne Identity to cross the $100 million mark.

Both Spider-Man and Attack of the Clones moved closer to their respective box-office milestones. Spider-Man should get to $390.5 million this weekend, and probably will top out at $410 million. Dropping 42%, Attack of the Clones should only get $5.5 million this weekend. With a total of $280.2 million after Sunday, Episode 2 probably will not make $300 million domestically.

The top ten films should make $149.4 million for the three-day weekend. That's 12.75% more than this weekend last year.

Friday-to-Friday Drop-Offs
Film	Fri-Fri Depreciation	Estimated 3-Day Weekend Depreciation
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones	-42.6%	-42%
Spiderman	-37.9%	-37%
Scooby Doo	-59.5%	-50.5%
The Bourne Identity	-46.8%	-41%
Windtalkers	-56.7%	-52%
The Sum of All Fears	-45%	-44%
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood	-38.7%	-37%

Extrapolated Estimates for the Top Ten
Projected Rank	Film	Estimated 3-Day Gross (M$)	Total Gross by Sunday (M$)
1	Lilo and Stitch	36.9	36.9
2	Minority Report	33.5	33.5
3	Scooby Doo	26.8	102.6
4	The Bourne Identity	16	53.3
5	The Sum of All Fears	7.5	97.1
6	Windtalkers	7	27
7	Juwanna Man	5.9	5.9
8	Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood	5.6	46.3
9	Star Wars: Attack of the Clones	5.5	280.2
10	Spider-Man	4.7	390.5

Internal multiplier = A comparison of Friday's numbers to the rest of the weekend. So if A Beautiful Mind makes $5.1 million on Friday and $17.8 million for the whole weekend, then its internal multiplier is 3.5 ($17.8 million / $5.1 million = 3.5). Analysts use this number in reverse to predict weekend numbers from Friday's numbers.