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 1^st.

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.

Continue reading Tracking numbers: ‘Wall-e,’ ‘Wanted’ and ‘Hancock’ strong

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.