King Kong
December 12 Box Office Overview
1. King Kong $31.4 million ($118.7 million total): Well…..the ship hasn’t sunk yet like a lot of people predicted, but this boat is no Titanic. For the second week in a row even though King Kong managed to claim the top spot, it is still falling way below expectations. Universal and Peter Jackson can look at the 4-day totals and spin it into whatever marginally good news they can, but looking at the 3-day totals tells the real story. Looking at the 3-day totals, Kong dropped a disappointing 58% from last week and barely beat out Chronicles of Narnia, which has been out one week more. Even though Kong will finish with close to a $170 million by the time its theatrical run ends, it will still be a big disappointment domestically….at least until it reaches DVD. This was a film that was supposed to rival Revenge of the Sith in terms of box office dollars, but if it continues down this path it is going to look more like Bad Boys II (Huge budget, lots of money at the box office, still considered a disappointment due to it never meeting its production budget). There is still a glimmer of hope for King Kong. With no major releases the next few weeks and with Christmas over, audiences may still be willing to give Kong a chance and maybe it might be able to rebound.
2. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe $30 million ($163.5 million total): King Kong may have won the battle for first place the past two weeks, but the war for Holliday supremacy goes to Chronicles. Chronicles continues to show that it is the film of choice for audiences at the moment dropping only 6% in its third week of release. As much as they’ll refuse to admit it, Disney loves the fact that Chronicles success is being compared so closely with Kong’s mediocre performance. For months leading up to their respective releases, experts were predicting it would be Chronicles that would be the big loser, but despite the release of six new films this weekend, Chronicles continues to bring in the money each week. With close to $164 million made so far, it should have no problem matching its production budget of $180 million by the end of the week and could easily go on to hit the $200 million mark by next week.
3. Fun with Dick and Jane $23.5 million ($31 million total): After seeing Fun with Dick and Jane, I almost dropped my beer when I saw that it cost $100 million to make it. $100 million is way too much for a film of this quality and from looking at the opening total, it has almost no shot of hitting that mark. Seems like I’m not the only one that knows this. Fun with Dick and Jane’s opening numbers are way behind past Jim Carrey comedies Liar Liar ($31 million) and Bruce Almighty ($67 million). I don’t think Jim Carrey is to blame for this. For a Jim Carrey film, this one was pretty much forgotten in terms of getting the word and buzz out leading out to its release. There was little information about the film which might have raised a red flag to moviegoers. Jim Carrey is such a big name people expect there to be major promotions for anything he’s in….now we know why there wasn’t. With a slew of negative reviews, bad word of mouth and a lack of any advertising, Fun with Dick and Jane is only going to go down from here. Unless a belated Christmas miracle happens, Fun with Dick and Jane is going to drop out of the standings and out of audiences heads faster than Aeon Flux did.
4. Cheaper by the Dozen 2 $14.7 million ($20 million total): Congrats on making $14 million because odds are you won’t see that number again. Cheaper by the Dozen 2’s $14 million opening was mostly due to that small portion of America who saw the first film and liked it. Aside from the posters at theaters, this film had next to no advertising until a few weeks leading up to its release. I understand that after making $138 million, there might have been some temptation to make a sequel, but was one really warranted? I’m pretty sure that’s what the majority of people who saw the first film thought because only half the audience that showed up for the first came back for the second. There was never any announcement on how much Cheaper by the Dozen 2 cost to make, but odds are it must’ve been a pretty big number because most sequels that are hits usually are. Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is dead in the water with no hope of jumping back to life, but I also predicted that same fate for Yours, Mine and Ours and look how wrong I was with that. Still, you should expect a huge drop next week.
5. The Family Stone $10.8 million ($30 million total): Fox may be pretty disappointed with Cheaper by the Dozen 2’s dismal performance but they can at least be happy with how well The Family Stone is doing. Sure it’s never going o hit blockbuster status, but Family Stone continues to earn solid numbers despite a ton of family films and comedies in theaters. With only a 13% drop from last week, Family Stone looks to be on it’s way to easily hitting the $50 million mark which is a great success for a film with paltry budget of $18 million. .
The Ringer
6. Memoirs of a Geisha $10.2 million ($13.3 million total)
7. The Ringer $8.4 million (1st week of release)
8. Rumor Has It $7.5 million (1st week of release)
9. Wolf Creek $5.9 million (1st week of release)
10. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire $5.7 million ($262 million total)
The numbers for the bottom 5 are a little deceiving. Aside from Goblet of Fire, 3 of the remaining 4 films opened up on Sunday and the 4th film finally saw a national release this week after a few weeks in limited release. What does this mean? With only 2 days of solid numbers, it’s hard to guess which of these four films would’ve finished in the top 5 had they been released on Friday instead of Sunday. Just looking at the numbers available, both Rumor Has It and—surprisingly—The Ringer would have seemed on pace to score a better than both Family Stone and Cheaper by the Dozen 2 did. The real test will be how well they perform this weekend. With no major releases this weekend we should have a better estimate on how good or bad these films will perform in coming weeks.
Box office predictions from last week:
1. King Kong $35 million
2. Fun with Dick and Jane $25 million
3. Cheaper by the Dozen 2 $22 million
4. Chronicles of Narnia $18 million
5. The Family Stone $8 million
Munich
Box office predictions for next weekend:
1. Chronicles of Narnia $19 million
2. King Kong $15 million
3. Munich $14 million
4. Fun with Dick and Jane $11 million
5. Rumor Has it $8 million
I want to hear from you guys what you think the totals are. Agree with me?
Disagree? E-mail (vince@canmag.com)
me your totals and I'll post the person who comes closest to the actual
totals.
Stay tuned for updates.
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