A Less Than Regal Opening Day for 'Prince Caspian'

For the third consecutive weekend, the box office will prove to be a tough beast to tame. While lots of analysts expected Iron Man to christen summer with a huge take, not too many guessed $100 million-plus. And while it became obvious in the days before its release that Speed Racer would struggle, even the lowest estimates were around $10 million more than the film wound up making in its debut. And for Prince Caspian, the second film in The Chronicles of Narnia, you were likely to find projections of $80 - $95 million; in other words, it would have a strong weekend but not Iron Man strong. And everyone was wrong...again. Caspian opened with an anemic $19 million on Friday, according to Box Office Mojo, meaning anything over $65 million is out of the question this weekend, which in turn means that the film won't be pushing $150 million by the end of next week, which should mean the film will probably fall close to a hundred million short of the domestic total of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. In all likelihood, Caspian will settle in between $55 and $60 million in its first three days, and that's a disturbing number for Narnia fans. The fate of the entire series rests on the success of this film and its follow-up, 2010's Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Even though the films are almost guaranteed to turn a profit internationally, they're such massive projects that Disney and Walden are not likely to keep dumping good money after bad, and seeing diminishing returns on subsequent movies is not the way The House of Mouse prefers doing business. At least Prince Caspian is not losing as much ground as Speed Racer. In its second week, the first flop of the summer is on pace to barely lumber past $30 million in ticket sales; it will be outgrossed by Baby Mama.