Originally posted by airlarry!
The question is whether Finding Nemo is strong enough to match Monsters Inc., or is more in the line of Lilo et al around $100-150 million after a summer of viewing. Any thoughts, AV?
Larry, the way I'm thinking about it is, Monsters, Inc was pretty much head to head with Harry Potter, and it was also competing against the recent memory of Shrek (I think that there was a segment of people that had seen Shrek and figured they didn't want to see another animated movie yet). I don't see as much competition for Nemo in the sort of demographic it appeals to, yet there is a lot of competition in general in the movie season (Hulk, T3) - so I would be surprised if it does worse than Monsters, inc., if that makes sense. But then again, movie goers are very fickle, and who knows, they may decide that they don't like fish.
I think Hope is probably closer to right than 170 million. Look at this way; A Bug's Life would have done over 170 million if you adjusted it for inflation. That was Pixar's first film, and they have built up a lot of reputation (and experience in story telling) since then, and, remember, dreamworks had rushed out Antz right before ABL, so there had to be some confusion about two CG movies about Antz. I can't see Finding Nemo making less money than a Bug's Life.
The big difference I see here is holiday season vs. summer, and how that works out. Also, I hadn't really thought about the "until Labor Day" part of it - but gosh, that is the whole summer, really. Who knows. Some big movie like Hulk may end up underperforming, or it may set box office records and shut out everything else.
DR
