weekendbox office

[MikeS]

Speilberg's "AI" captured the # 1 spot with 30M Fast and the furious was #2 with 20M Dr Doolittle 2 was 3rd with 15.4M Tomb raider was # 4 with 9.8M. Baby boy was 5 with 8.6M Atlantis was 6th with 7.8M and Shrek was 7th with 7.1m.


Here were my predictions;

Movie Prediction Actual
AI 35M 30M
Fast and The Furious 23M 20M
Dr Doolittle 16M 15.4M
Atlantis 8.5M 7.8M
Shrek 5M 7.1M


I did better this week. Pearl Harbor was # 9 with 4.4M wich brings it's cume to 179.4M Since it is about done it's run it should end up with 185 million. I predicted about 175-185M. .


AI should drop off quickly since moviegoers gave it a C+ rating. Word of mouth will kill it.

Next week Scary Movie will bring in about 40M Cats and Dogs will yield 28 M and Kiss of the Dragon about 22M.

Let's see what will happen.

 

[airlarry!]

Mike:

Quick question. Where do the weekly takes go? Are they calculated in the Friday grosses? It seems like movies do big business during the week in the summertime, and I wondered how and where they are reported.

 

[MikeS]

Larry
For films already playing like Fast and The Furious, the 20M quoted is for the week. In the case Of AI it is for the 3 day period Fri-Sun. Hope that answered your question.

 

[airlarry!]

So Atlantis' take of 7.8 is for the whole week...got it.

 

[Patch'sD]

I don't think that is right. Last week Atlantis's gross was about $ 43 M. This week it is at $ 57 M. I believe the $ 7.8 M is for Fri, Sat, and Sun.

 

[Another Voice]

MikeS – My gut tells me that ‘Cats & Dogs’ is going to be the big weekend film and that ‘Scary Movie 2’ is going to be a major disappointment for Disney (it’s getting to be the theme of the summer, isn’t it). With all of the major movies misfiring this summer – ‘Mummy Returns’, ‘Pearl Harbor’, ‘Tomb Raider’, ‘A.I.’ – I think the audience is looking for something with a spark of creativity and originality. ‘Scary Movie 2’ has that “been there, done that” smell about it that will kill it at the box office. It the same thing that killed ‘Evolution’ and ‘Dr. Dolittle 2’. Hollywood marketing can be pretty good, but there are few things that simply can’t be covered-up.

‘Pearl Harbor’ is out of the top ten now and will finish short of the career-saving $200 million mark. It’s now impossible for this movie to turn a real profit and we’ll start to see the fall-out shortly. If nothing else, this should throw ‘The Alamo’ into permanent turn-around (a good thing). People at Disney are now trying to spin the ‘Memorial Day Curse’. The spin is that any movie opened on Memorial Day will under perform because of all of the stiff competition that follows every weekend. They point to ‘Jurassic Park: The Lost World’ and ‘Mission: Impossible 2’ as their “proof”. Of course, they don’t mention that those two films and ‘Pearl’ were BAD movies and that probably had more to do with the box office results than anything else.

‘Atlantis’ may end up as the lowest grossing post-Lion King animated film. It’s rumored that the finger pointing has already begun on Riverside Drive (among the few people who actually work in that building anymore). The most immediate concern is ‘Treasure Planet’ which shares the non-musical, all-action sensibilities of ‘Atlantis’. Expect some games with this film’s release date to avoid any summer-competition. Also in the post-Shrek world, you can expect the ad campaign for ‘Lilo and Stitch’ to emphasize how “hip and edgy” the film is (and missing the reasons for The Green One’s success).

 

[All Aboard]

‘Atlantis’ may end up as the lowest grossing post-Lion King animated film.

AV, looks like you are right on this one. I just ran an analysis of Emporer's numbers v. Atlantis's numbers. Even though ENG was behind by $12M through three weekends, the film had some serious staying power. It did $15M the first week of January (sparked by the holidays) and then had a $9m week afterwards. It slowly but surely faded in future weeks, but in the end grossed 10x it's first weekend. That's an interesting fact, most Disney animated features of late have finished at roughly 5x their first weekend. Just a simple regression of the numbers (with a little pad for the 4th of July) indicate that Atlantis could wind up short of $90m, putting it in serious contention for the title nobody wants. Hey, at least they have Rescuers Down Under to point at, right?

 

[Another Voice]

‘Emperor’ was different because of the time of year it was released. Few movies are released between January and March and that let ‘Emperor’ play longer. In my opinion, it was also much closer to what people expected a Disney animated feature to be and so picked up more business than the non-traditional ‘Atlantis’.

‘Atlantis’ had the problems of both more competition and, frankly, fewer people that like the movie. The buzz on ‘Emperor’ was that people thought it was better than they were expecting, but the buzz on ‘Atlantis’ is one of disappointment. If you compare ‘Atlantis’ to the other Disney animated summer films, you’ll see that ‘Atlantis’ both opened lower and has a steeper fall-off than any of the others. That is not a good sign. If ‘Cats & Dogs’ picks up good word of mouth (which I think it will), it will pretty much end the box office run for ‘Atlantis’.

 

[Josiah Harper]

Did you see the review of Cats & Dogs in the present issue of The New Yorker? It sounds like a pretty sophomoric film to me.

It'll be very, very sad if C&D outperforms Atlantis: The Lost Empire!!!

Joe

 

[Testtrack321]

....and that ‘Scary Movie 2’ is going to be a major disappointment for Disney (it’s getting to be the theme of the summer, isn’t it).

WHAT??? I thought Scary Movie 2 was done by Dimension Films (as stated by Newsweek)? Tell me if I am worng or if Dimension Films is a subdivision of Disny.

 

[All Aboard]

Here's how it works (I think) Dimension is a sub of Miramax which is a wholly owned property of Disney that functions like an independent studio. (thanks to AV for this info)

 

[Another Voice]

Dimension is the “low budget” brand name for Miramax, and Miramax is owned by Disney. Generally, the art house and adult films go out as Miramax, the teen-oriented and more violent movie go out as Dimension. The entire organization is owned by Disney, but is still basically run by the two brothers who founded the company. They are not completely independent and they’ve been brought more and more under Disney’s control as time has passed.

The LA Times ran an interesting article about how Disney interfered with ‘crazy/beautiful’ (which opened last Friday). The director was trying to make a serious film, but Disney demanded that the movie receive a PG-13 rating and forced the director to make cuts which he feels damaged the film. At the same time, Disney had no problem with ‘Scary Movie 2’ as a very strong R rating. Essential, Disney was saying that violence and sexually raunchy humor was fine, but an honest look at alcoholism and drug abuse wasn’t.

The reason ‘Cats & Dogs’ will do well is that it delivers on its promise – a lot of laughs. The public will forgive a lot of other things if the movie lives up to its billing. ‘Pearl Harbor’ didn’t, and neither did ‘Atlantis’. Another interesting note is that ‘Cats & Dogs’ was supposed to be an animated movie, but the makers felt it would work better as a live action film. I think ‘Atlantis’ had the same problem – it would have been better live.

 

[Testtrack321]

Thanks AV! The spinnoffs of companies are really puzzling!