Although you can view the daily box office in the left sidebar since today, we didn’t want to miss out on the weekend graph. What happened? In short, ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’ disappointed. The industry was expecting it at least to beat its prequel, which made $65.5 in its opening weekend. Some even said it would do $80 million. But as it turns out, people weren’t that crazy about Caspian, since it only made $57 million. Not bad, but with its budget rumored to be between $100 and $200 million, its opening weekend could have been a tad higher.

If it wasn’t for ‘Speed Racer,’ ‘Prince Caspian’ might have made some ‘loser headlines.’ But as we can see in the graph above, Narnia is doing amazing compared to ‘Speed Racer.’ The flashy movie didn’t even manage to top $30 million in the US after two weekend. Now it’s the question if people will remember the Wachowski brothers for ‘The Matrix’ or ‘Speed Racer.’ Can the success of one make up for the failure of the other?

‘Iron Man’ and ‘What Happens in Vegas’ both had another good weekend, with respectively $31.2 and $13.9 million. ‘What Happens in Vegas’ has already topped $40 million in the US, $5 million more than its budget.

The $100 million ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’ is not living up to expectations. Friday box office numbers indicate an estimated $55 million for the whole opening weekend, while tracking numbers had ‘Prince Caspian’ beating the $65.5 million opening by ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.’

The Disney’s fantasy only made $19.3 million this Friday, which must make Aslan a sad little Lion. It won’t make ‘Prince Caspian’ a total failure or box office flop, but these aren’t reassuring numbers for the sequels. ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ is already in production for 2010 however, so the family will have at least one more chance to prove itself.

‘Prince Caspian’ is regarded by fans as one of the worst in the series. Many critics have mentioned the darker tone of the movie, which may have scared away some of the Christian community. ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ made $23 million on its Friday opening.

Looking at the older movies, ‘Iron Man,’ ‘What Happens in Vegas’ and ‘Speed Racer’ respectively did $8.6, $4.6 and $2.0 million. Some very healthy numbers for ‘Iron Man’ and ‘What Happens in Vegas.’ We’ve seen ‘Iron Man’ dropping pretty hard last weeks, especially after the weekend, but it’s holding up for another $30 million against ‘Prince Caspian.’

1. Iron Man: $64,650,994 ($186 million budget, second week)
2. What Happens in Vegas: $26,457,642 ($35 million budget)
3. Speed Racer: $22,166,614 ($100 million budget)

Continue reading This week’s box office roundup