Directors: Steven Spielberg’s box office ritual
May 28th, 2008 at 3:20 pm

Show me the 311 million dollars

It was Monday morning. Steven Spielberg just made himself a cup a coffee when the phone started to ring. He picked up and said nothing. The man on the other side was silent too, but then asked, “Steven…?” “Yes,” Spielberg answered. “311 million,” the voice said. I imagine Spielberg dancing around in his bathrobe after these words, but that’s just speculation on my part.

This is the actual ritual Steven Spielberg has during his opening weekends. “What I do on opening weekend is my ritual is a total blackout, like a sequestered jury. No radio, no telephone, no internet, no newspapers. I don’t want to hear anything until Monday morning. I just want to hear one number, which is the Monday morning number,” Spielberg said.

I wonder what he does in the meantime. You’ll need some discipline to go a whole Memorial Day weekend without telephone, internet or radio. I can imagine some teenage girls rather killing themselves than spending one weekend without it. But I guess Spielberg has enough toys to keep him happy.

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The Memorial Day weekend in a graph
May 26th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

Weekend Box Office Graph

Remember how we talked about the $400 million Indy 4 has to make before the big three get a share? Well, expect this point to be reached within a week. ‘Indiana Jones 4′ made $311 million worldwide in the first couple of days. Spielberg’s best opening to date. The old whip made an estimated $151 million during the full 5-day Memorial Day weekend, from Thursday to Monday.

‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’ came in second with a disappointing $31 million during its second weekend. It merely beat ‘Iron Man,’ which made $27.5 million and currently stand at a total of $485 million worldwide. ‘What Happens in Vegas’ grossed double of what ‘Speed Racer’ did, with another $12 million. While ‘Speed Racer’ is driving off the circuit, making just $5.5 million.

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First ‘Indiana Jones 4′ numbers: $2.2 million
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:26 pm

Yesterday we saw how ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ was releasing early in some territories and now the first ticket sales have been counted. Paramount said Steven Spielberg’s baby made $2.2 in just one day in France. If we compare these numbers to the other Paramount blockbuster, we see ‘Iron Man’ made $7 million in the first 5 days in France, including the whole weekend. Indy can easily beat this.

Fueled by the positive Cannes hype, Indy sold 240,000 tickets. In Belgium, another country where the movies open at Wednesday, the picture made $250,000. We might see some early US numbers soon. A lot of theaters were sold out of tickets for their early midnight shows yesterday.


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