True, that happened at my theater. All the early matinee shows performed like Sundays, then after 4:00, then we returned to our usual Friday Business. So Friday's numbers on the most part, may be inflated due to the Holidays.

I'm curious what the conversations are like over at Warner this morning.

Does anyone know why this film wasn't released later in the month?

Pretty good for all movies, except Polar Express. It got higher than I expected, because I thought lower than $6 million for Friday. I am gonna do so good for all the games, alas my only sub 80% is After the Sunset!

My fingers are closed VERY tightly for Polar Express to succeed on Saturday and with legs. Zemeckis has never failed yet, and it's a pretty good movie to boot.

My fingers are closed VERY tightly for Polar Express to succeed on Saturday and with legs. Zemeckis has never failed yet, and it's a pretty good movie to boot.

My fingers are closed VERY tightly for Polar Express to succeed on Saturday and with legs. Zemeckis has never failed yet, and it's a pretty good movie to boot.

FRIDAY NUMBERS ANALYSIS


1. The Incredibles kicked off the weekend with another blast. PIXAR's 6th theatrical outing is doing incredibly (no oun intended) great busniess. It fell by just 27.3% in comparison to last Friday. The drop is smaller than both Monsters Inc. (over 31%) and Finding Nemo (over 39%) had and that despite direct competition from the widely released The Polar Express. The movie held on very well and even though the next direct competitor, Spongebob, is just 7 days away, The Incredibles still can be sure that it will reach $300 million with ease. For this weekend, I predict a slightly worse multiplier than Monsters Inc. had, mostly due to the direct competition from The Polar Express on Saturday and Sunday. Therefore, my weekend projection is $55.3 million. However, The Incredibles will fall around 35% nxt weekend, only to increase slightly on the Thanksgiving Weekend, giving it 4 weekends above $30 million in a row and over $240 million by the end of its 4th weekend. At the moment, I project the total gross to be around $310-320 million, but it will depend on its drop when Spongebob will be released.

2. The Polar Express is slowly recovering from the rather disappointing start on Wednesday. Its day-to-day increase was slightly better than The Incredibles' and the fact that it is more of a kiddie movie than The Incredibles will help it to obtain a very healthy multiplier over the weekend. I expect a huge increase for it on Saturday, followed by a rather small drop on Sunday. I expect it to end up with around $23.6 million over the weekend. Not a bad result, but certainly a disappointing one in the light of the movie's huge budget and the super-wide release. An interesting note is that The Polar Express will end up being the first movie in over 3500 theatres to get a PTA of UNDER $10,000 over the weekend.

The performance of this movie is rather sad, considering that Tom Hanks track record this year hasn't exactly been splendid. First Coens' latest outing, The Ladykillers has disappointed with a gross of under $40 million and then Steven Spielberg's The Terminal turned out to be Spielberg's smallest-grossing movie since Amistad. It is hard to say if Tom Hanks has started losing some of his box-office draw-power, but these three movies indicate that. Nonetheless, The Polar Express should end up having great legs, due to the fact that this is the major Christmas movie this year. The legs should be a mixture of Elf's and The Santa Clause 2's, giving The Polar Express a total gross of around $125-130 million.

3. After the Sunset's opening day is certainly disappointing, but it could have been expected considering the awful reviews the movie has received. The last movie to open to similar terrible reviews was Taxi and it opened to a VERY SIMILAR number some weeks ago. Looks like both movies are comparable. Both got a big amount of theatres and both disappointed. However, the result is even more disappointing in After the Sunset's case as the movie seemed to be able to offer more than Taxi. Salma Hayek and Piece Brosnan are both well-knowns actors and heist flicks like The Italian Job, Ocean's Eleven and even Brosnan's own The Thomas Crown Affair have been doing very well. Also, considering that the theatres are mostly full with either family movies or horror movies right now, one would expect After the Sunset to fare much better than it does. Well, it didn't. The disappointing Friday gross should lead to a weekend of around $11.3 million. The future prospects of this movie aren't too bright with National Treasure providng more or less direct competition to it. It won't have 60+% drops due to the nature of the movie and an already disappointing opening, but it still won't be able to break even in the USA. I see a total gtross of around $33-36 million.

4. Seed of Chucky has surely surprised many people with its halthy opening day. Its opening day was somewhat worse than the last installment's of the franchise, Bride of Chuky and yet, considering that it is the 5th outing of this R-rated horror franchise and competing against horror hits like SAW and The Grudge, this is a pretty impressive opening. The wekend multiplier won't be great, but I am sure that this movie's budget wasn't exactly sky-high either. The movie will break even in theatres and have an even greater run on DVD. I see this weekend's gorss being around $8.1 million. The movie will drop fast in the upcoming weeks considering that it has a fanbase that rushed out to see it as fast as possible. I see it leaving the theatres with around $20-22 million.

5. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason has opened with a BLAST! It has made only $1 million less than the original movie on its first Friday and that despite the original having a theatre count of over 1600. This proves how big the fanbase of Bridget Jones has grown after the first movie. The strategy of releasing this movie in only 530 theatres first and expand next weekend has already been used with another R-rated British romantic flick, Love Actually last year and it also paid off with the Bridget Jones sequel. I expect big things of it next weekend when it expands to 2500+ theatres. I see it ending up with around $9.3 million and grabbing over $20 million next weekend. However, due to the bad reviews, I expect this movie to have definitely worse legs than the original had and struggle to $100 million. I expect it to finish with around $93-98 million.

6. The Grudge did pretty well on Friday, espeially considering the big competition in the horror department, coming fron SAW and Seed of Chucky. Even if this Sarah Michelle Gellar starrer stopped making any money whatsoever right now, it would still be a huge hit consdiering the production budget of around $10 million. The performance of this movie hints huge things for The Ring 2 next year. The weekend multiplier should be about the same as last weekend and The Grudge will end up with about $7.4 million over the weekend. Its further run will be hurt by the definitely big theatre drops in the upcoming weeks due to the big releases like National Treasure and the expansion of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. Still a total gross of $115 million is within reach.

7. Ray's Friday increase and the week-to-week drops are slightly disappointing. However, we have to keep in mind that the movie was expanded to over 400 new locations last weekend. Overall, the performance of this 2 1/2 hours long biopic is admirable and even though it won't make $100 million, a healthy total domestic gross of around $80-85 million and maybe more if it really picks up some oscar buzz during the awards season. For this weekend, I project around $8.3 million.

8. SAW has been a hit even before its release in the USA, considering its $1 million budget and the $10+ million gross in the UK. So everything it makes now is pure profit and this profit is huge. The movie passed most people's expectations already, holding up superbly even after Halloween and passing $40 million this weekend. Surely, the R-rated competitor Seed Of Chucky hurt it somewhat, yet the movie held up nicely with a week-to-week drop of just 41.6%. I expect it to make around $6.5 million over the weekend, heading for the total gross of around $57 million.

9. Shall We Dance held on superbly and should have its 4th weekend drop of under 30% in a row! Amazing for a movie with three stars who are not exactly box-office draws and negative sneaks turn-outs as well as horrendous reviews. I see it making around $4.2 million over the weekend leading to a total gross of over $60 million.

10. Alfie's week-to-week drop was bad, but also expected. It got direct competition from the much more attractive Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Alfie has never had much going for it anyway. It will make around $3 million over the weekend and disappear very fast after that with a total gross of around $15-17 million. It has not been a good year for Jude Law so far.

Great Friday Numbers Analysis Lecter.

pretty much what I expected from Incredibles and Polar based on our business yesterday I think I said like 14 and 7 so I was close...
however Brigdet did a heck of a lot better than I would have thought it could have done in only 530 theatres..I figured a 13,000 pta was plenty high enough..oh well *shrug*

Thanks Zing!

I second that! Very well done Lecter. :wink:

Great hold for The Incredibles.

Thanks for the appreciation, guys.

I just revised some projections

YAY!! Polar express sucks!!

GREAT for the Incredibles