'Sex and the City' Scores $20 Million on Opening Day

Will Sex and the City do better than most analysts predicted? If the numbers reported by Variety are correct, the answer is a resounding yes. Based on early ticket sales, the estimates for Friday alone are in the $20 million range. The film received a huge number of advance ticket sales throughout the week, which gives the film such strong numbers. If Sex performs the way movies usually do on opening weekend, that could mean a potential $60 million weekend, which nobody saw coming. Personally, we had Sex and the City beating Indiana Jones this weekend because it's the first and last thing women get all to themselves for months, but a lot of people disagreed with that assessment. The Friday numbers may not go up the normal percentage on Saturday, because there's likely a flood of opening night business, but it would be a little surprising if we don't see a slight increase on Saturday and the usual drop-off on Sunday. Our forecast had Sex raking in $52 million, which now seems like an easy goal to hit. I don't believe it will get all the way to $60 million, but it will do a lot better than the sub-$40 million predictions I've seen around. To that end, here's a bit from IMDB:

"No analyst is predicting that the movie version of Sex and the City will beat the second week of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this weekend, but most suggest it will wind up a solid contender at No. 2. Most are predicting that the R-rated movie, which had reportedly cost around $60 million to make, will rake in about half its nut over the weekend, virtually all of it from an adult female and gay male audience."

Variety indicates that the one-day estimate would be the most money ever earned by a romantic comedy on opening day. We compared the movie to The Devil Wears Prada to try to get a gauge on its potential: Both are summer movies, both are geared almost specifically to women, etc. Obviously, the carryover from the TV series to the film is going to be greater than Prada's audience, but its $9 million opening day two years ago was a terrific accomplishment. This is in a whole new league. You can't compare a movie that opens in 3,285 theaters to one that opens in nearly 1,000 more than that, but...if you look at the per-screen average it comes out to a little over $6,000, which is just out of range from the top blockbusters of the summer. As we have all month long, we'll update the box office tomorrow and Sunday as well.

Comments

[JMK]

What can I say? Time to humbly eat crow, and admit that there's NO way to logically predict the summer B.O. (esp. since even The Strangers also opened rather well), though I'm still saying The Happening will be anything but...