Friday, July 30, 2010

@hangar24's tasting flight..

Furry creatures fighting crime were enough to stop magic spells this weekend as G-Force surprised everyone by opening at number one while Harry Potter took a nasty tumble in its second week.

The number one film of the week is G-Force, Disney’s latest talking-animals-who-fight-bad-guys film. It grossed a surprisingly high $32M on its opening weekend which was much higher than was speculated by pundits.

My guess of $25M was off a bit but looking back now I should have gone higher as Disney’s marketing wizards once again saturated the media so no kid was untouched by the advertising of the film. This one should have legs as Aliens in the Attic, the only other kid film coming out this summer, looks like it’ll be a dud.

Harry Potter fell hard in its second week as the most fans opted out of a second or third visit with the Half-Blood Prince. The latest boy wizard adventure fell a disturbing 62%. The film was front-loaded as most fans flocked to this film in its first week. It will probably stabilize a bit next week and fall 40-50% more. Compared to my guess, I was just $1M over its $30M weekend gross.

Third went to Katherine Heigel, who is slowly turning into the next romantic comedy queen. Her latest, The Ugly Truth, grossed $27M over the three-day period. That’s not a surprising figure considering that The Proposal, the last romantic comedy released, opened six weeks ago. I underestimated this one as I figured $20M was all it would make.

The horror film Orphan took fourth this weekend showing that there is still room for scary movies in the middle of this packed summer. Orphan grossed $12.7M which was much higher than my $9M guess.

Fifth went to Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs which tumbled 53% in its fourth week. A lot of this blame can be placed on the other 3-D movie G-Force taking away its primary audience. Ice Age also lost a lot of its 3-D screens to the rodents and those engagements made a fair chunk of change for its studio. My estimate was $1M higher than its $8M gross this weekend.

The number ten film of all-time(!) is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a film that just keeps chugging along. My guess of $7M was just slightly lower as it took sixth place with an $8M three-day gross and fell only 42% from last weekend.

The Hangover had yet another tiny fall from it previous weekend showing just how positive the word-of-mouth on this comedy is. It fell a very low 21% from its last three-day period and grossed $6.5M. I had it pegged at $5.5M making it the third film in a row I was only off $1M in estimating.

The other romantic comedy of the summer was The Proposal and it held on really well considering its competition from The Ugly Truth. It fell a tiny 23% and made $6.5M in which was good enough for eighth place. Its weekend gross was slightly higher than my $5M guesstimate.

Ninth went to Public Enemies which showed its staying power with a $4M gross in its fourth week. I was spot on with my estimate. This is probably time to wave goodbye as it’ll drop out of the top ten next week.

Tenth went to the Brüno. Enough said on that one.

PLACE TITLE WKEND GROSS %DROP MY PREDICTION
1 G-Force $32M opening $25M
2 Harry Potter 6 $30M 62% $31M
3 The Ugly Truth $27M opening $20M
4 Orphan $12.7M opening $9M
5 Ice Age 3 $8M 53% $9M
6 Transformers 2 $8M 42% $7M
7 The Hangover $6.5M 21% $5.5M
8 The Proposal $6.5M 23% $5M
9 Public Enemies $4M 46% $4M
10 Brüno $2.7M 67% $4M

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