Fearless Forecast - Sisters are Doing it for Themselves

We learned last night that Sex and the City had an impressive run overseas on its opening day, grabbing the extrapolated equivalent of $45 million American if it were a three-day weekend.

Can it duplicate those numbers at home? I'm here to tell you it can and will. If you look at the landscape, there aren't too many female friendly movies this summer, certainly none with the track record of Sex and the City. So, this is an all or nothing scenario for the ladies. They won't all come out for it this weekend, but the die-hards will be there in groups of four, coincidentally, hoping for a little more New York nostalgia. I'd be really surprised if Sex and the City doesn't give us the kind of box office performance The Devil Wears Prada managed a couple of years ago. That film made $124 million with a late June release date, and this should have almost double the opening weekend business, followed by a good run through at least the Fourth of July weekend. All told, I'd put a cap of about $155 million or so on its box office potential, with roughly a third of that arriving this weekend. As for the testosterone-fueled summer movies, look for Iron Man to inch closer to becoming the year's first $300 million earner - a bit of a surprise - and look for Indiana Jones to jump over $200 million on its way to about $300 - $325 million. The Top Five: 1 - Sex and the City ($52 million) 2 - Indiana Jones ($46 million) 3 - Prince Caspian ($14 million) 4 - Iron Man ($12 million) 5 - The Strangers ($11 million)

Comments

[JMK]

I'm taking the "under" on SATC (low-balling it @$21-27-M); they're NOT toppling ol' Indy (that projection sounds about right)...

[Get The Big Picture]

$21 - $27 million? Look, I know I missed the mark on some of these summer movies the way everybody else did, but that's not even close. "Lowballing" it would be around $35 million. Still, I can't see it making any less than $40 million this weekend, in which case it would lose to Indy.

[JMK]

Not really buying into the (beyond ridiculous) hype SATC has generated, particularly on the East coast; I'm not saying it won't be a hit ala Devil Wears Prada (which was more of a relatively slow build that held steady for weeks), but an R rating, a 140-minute running time(!), as well as being too NYC-centric for its own good doesn't suggest an enormous opening, which would be unprecedented for a comedy with the aforementioned factors going against it...