Some of our regular readers might have expected our weekly ‘post-weekend box office drop‘ yesterday, but since we had the Memorial Day weekend, we can’t really compare the results. In the post-weekend drop we compare the box office results of Saturday + Sunday and Monday + Tuesday. And this Monday was actually a Sunday, so we would generate skewed results.

Continue reading The post-weekend box office drop

Those tears make Aslan look so sad. No need to cry though. As we saw in our ‘Prince Caspian’ box office story, the Disney blockbuster is doing well overseas and will still be very profitable. It might not make $750 million like the first movie, but it will soon have a bigger worldwide gross than its $200 million budget. Disney CEO Robert Iger however, found it necessary to defend Prince Caspian’s box office performance. Maybe because analysts have downgraded their forecasts for Disney’s next financial quarter.

He blamed the release date, which Disney themselves moved from Christmas to spring, for the weak showing in the US. Between ‘Iron Man’ and ‘Indiana Jones 4,’ ‘Prince Caspian’ got lost in the crowded market place. “There’s just too much out there,” Iger said. The question is, will they move the next Narnia back to the Christmas season, which was much more fitting for the movies’ atmosphere, or will they keep the May 7, 2010 release date?

The box office weekend starts so soon when you have a Memorial Day and the overseas market opening early. Just yesterday we posted the US tracking numbers and now the actual numbers are beginning to roll in. ‘Sex and the City: The Movie’ is starting off well overseas. Pink lady nights brought in $4 million in the U.K. at just 460 screens. If we do the math, that’s a whopping $8700 per screen on a week day. Was my buzz-meter right this time? Is it really going to beat all expectations?

France was a little less excited, with a decent $800,000 at 540 screens. But will the ladies in the U.S. be just as hyped as the ones in the U.K., where the movie premiered last week. Or will the mediocre reviews affect the box office numbers.

I personally don’t think the target audience will check a lot of review, but we’ll know in a couple of days. ‘Sex and the City’ won’t be out in the U.S. until Friday.