Box Office - 'High School Musical' Sings a Victory Song

High School Musical cooled off considerably as the weekend progressed, and although it had as $16.9 million Friday, the guaranteed Disney hit only drew another $25 million over the next two days, according to new estimates from Box Office Mojo. Still, you make $42 million in three days, it's hard to find a lot of fault with that. The movie, the first in Disney's enormously successful series to be a theatrical release, beat Saw V on a weekend that the horror franchise has owned in recent years. That said, Saw V still made $30.5 million, eerily close to the numbers it has put up on opening day for the last four years.No other movie came close to those two in terms of drawing power, with Max Payne winning third place over Beverly Hills Chihuahua, and Pride and Glory having slipping into fifth place in its debut.So why are we concentrating on how High School Musical does Friday to Saturday to Sunday? It could indicate is a lower ceiling down the line; we've seen all year that movies with big opening days but precipitous drops over the next two days keep that cooling trend going over the next few weeks, when films obviously make their most money. Saw V had an even bigger drop from Friday to Saturday. What does all that tell us? In essence, it says that the hardcore fans see a film as early as they can and once they're gone, they're gone.You can contrast that with Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which peaked on its first Saturday, when most movies see their biggest numbers, and was stronger on Sunday than Friday. Those are general curiosity and word-of-mouth numbers, and that's how a movie builds six weeks of strong performance. And as we've seen, in four weeks, Chihuahua is still doing quite well. I'd still expect High School Musical and Saw to be contenders next week, with only two films getting releases wide enough to compete, The Haunting of Molly Hartley and Zack and Miri Make a Porno. After that, though, it'll be downhill fairly quickly.The Top Five:1 - High School Musical ($42 million)
2 - Saw V ($30.5 million)
3 - Max Payne ($7.6 million)
4 - Beverly Hills Chihuahua ($6.9 million)
5 - Pride and Glory ($6.5 million)