Thursday
18Dec2008
Fearless Forecast - Audiences Will Say 'Yes'
Thursday, December 18, 2008 at 12:32PM
There's a more competitive weekend on the horizon in
theaters across America. Last week, only one big new release hit screens,
The Day the Earth Stood Still, and it was mired
by bad reviews and still made $30 million. That's nice, but not enough of a head
start to make the film a huge hit in the long run.
1 - Yes Man ($26 million)
2 - Seven Pounds ($20 million)
3 - The Day the Earth Stood Still ($12.5 million)
4 - The Tale of Despereaux ($11 million)
5 - Four Christmases ($9 million)
Sorry, I just can't say yes to that. It certainly has potential to do well, but if it makes $100 million, I think that would be one of the bigger surprises of Carrey's recent career. You've got a crowded weekend and a bunch of new movies next weekend to contend with. Strong word of mouth would help, but that would mean it needs to get strong word of mouth.
Squaring off against Carrey is Will Smith, the undisputed box office king. Eight straight $100 million films, and his last two movies earned over $200 million. The streak might end with Seven Pounds, a quality film, simply because it's a bit of a downer. Ask yourself if you want a bit of a downer this holiday season, and a likely response might be, "What, another one?"
So give the edge to Jim Carrey, who has the benefit of 800 more theaters. If both movies average, say, $6,000 per screen, that's about a $5 million difference in box office. But I think they'll see similar numbers outside of the grosses.
The animated The Tale of Despereaux will either do much better than I'm expecting or it won't do much at all. And I can't figure out why I feel that way. I guess it doesn't have the talk that accompanies these modern cartoons. So while my gut tells me about $8 million, maybe $9 million, I'll bump it up a little bit because of advantageous timing. On the other hand, with all the money parents are spending on Christmas, this may be the last thing they want to do on the final weekend before the biggest gimme day of the year.
The Top Five:
1 - Yes Man ($26 million)
2 - Seven Pounds ($20 million)
3 - The Day the Earth Stood Still ($12.5 million)
4 - The Tale of Despereaux ($11 million)
5 - Four Christmases ($9 million)
Last week was awful. We predicted The Day the Earth Stood Still would zoom past $40 million. That's what the early tracking indicated, and people generally love average, stupid science fiction movies. So that was disappointing. Otherwise, not a bad draw, though.
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