I’m finally back home with my beloved internet connection, so here’s one last update before I’m off and I’ll be back tomorrow with the ‘regular’ updates. I’ll just give the overseas totals in a top 10 this time. We see ‘Indiana Jones 4’ having a slight edge over ‘The Incredible Hulk’ at the slow overseas box office. This is because the old whip finally invaded Japan with an estimated $13.1 mill opening.
1. Indiana Jones 4: $25 million ($392 million total)
2. The Incredible Hulk: $23.4 million ($65.8 million total)
3. Sex and the City: $21.4 million ($169.7 million total)
4. Kung Fu Panda: $19 million ($66.5 million total)
5. The Happening: $14.2 million ($57 million total)
6. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan: $7.8 million ($13.1 million total)
7. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: $7.3 million ($137 million total)
8. Get Smart: $5.7 million
9. Made of Honor: $3.5 million ($43.8 million total)
10. 21: $2.7 million ($67.4 million total)
Another batch of +$100 million budget movies is coming up. This week we’ll see ‘Wall-e,’ the highly anticipated new $120 million Pixar animation. ‘Wanted,’ the teen-oriented, action driven, testosterone powered, Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy featuring $65 million spy movie. And the week after, anti-hero, rehab going and $150 million ‘Hancock’ will storm theaters early July 1st.
Tracking for ‘Wall-e’ is good. Compared to ‘Ratatouille’ last year:
Awareness: 84% (compared to 82% for ‘Ratatouille’) Definite Interest: 41% (to 38% for ‘Ratatouille’)
First choice: 10% (to 8% for ‘Ratatouille’)
Very early box office estimates would put ‘Wall-e’ around a $70 million opening weekend.
I still owe you the final weekend box office numbers. The studios set ‘Get Smart’ as the clear winner. And I think it’s fair to say ‘The Love Guru’ bombed, hard. It was beat by last week’s ‘The Incredible Hulk’ and the two week old ‘Kung Fu Panda’ by +$7 mill – you can go here for the Friday and Saturday box office.
‘Get Smart’ with Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway ended with a decent $39.1 million, considering its $80 million budget. ‘The Incredible Hulk’ was last in our post-weekend box office drop last Wednesday and dropped even worse than expected during its second weekend. It ended with $21.5 million, a 70% drop. ‘Kung Fu Panda’ did slightly better and had a great third weekend with another $21.7 million. ‘Kung Fu Panda’ now has a domestic total of $155.5 million and ‘The Incredible Hulk’ now stands at $96.5 million in the US.
‘The Love Guru’ ended the weekend with a shameful $14 million. It wasn’t a spectacular weekend in terms of numbers, only in terms of bomb. And what a bomb ‘The Love Guru’ was.
It’s a painful weekend for Mike Myers. It might be admirable when you create a new character, while you have many the people love – ‘Austin Powers’ and ‘Wayne’s World.’ But it’s also very damaging for your career when it goes horribly wrong. Well, at least he didn’t directly damage the ‘Austin Powers’ franchise (yet) and he has enough future projects, with ‘Shrek’ 4, 5, 6, 7, etc. But this weekend is turning out to be a disaster. ‘The Love Guru’ only made an estimated $4.7 million this Saturday, down from the official $5.3 million Friday. If you add another (low) $4 million for Sunday, the (un)funny movie won’t end above $14 million this weekend.
The final Friday number for ‘Get Smart’ was a slightly lower than expected $13.4 million. Saturday seems to be up a bit to $14.5 million. Add a low $10 mill for Sunday and you’ve got a ‘Get Smart’ weekend total slightly below $40 million.
‘Kung Fu Panda’ and ‘The Incredible Hulk’ will both end the weekend above ‘The Love Guru’ with about $21 million per movie.
I’ve been staying at a no-internet zone for a couple of days, so I’m sorry for the slightly lower update frequency. This also caused the delayed roundup, but it’s an interesting one nonetheless.
1. The Incredible Hulk: $74,919,370 ($150 million budget)
2. Kung Fu Panda: $50,218,801 ($130 million budget, second week)
3. The Happening: $40,267,349 ($57 million budget)
