Saturday
07Jun2008
Box Office - Friday's Big for the 'Panda' Express
Saturday, June 7, 2008 at 11:31AM
It appears that the first full weekend in June will go
exactly according to plan.
Kung Fu Panda charged out of the gate on
Friday, earning $20 million
according to Box Office Mojo, and
Adam Sandler's
You Don't Mess With the Zohan proved he still
has enough muscle to make noise in the multiplex.
The new releases are expected to open in first and
second place, and unless something catastrophic happens between now and Monday,
the first competitive weekend of the summer will wind up exactly that way. Last
week,
Sex and the City made $26 million on opening
day, leveling off mightily over the rest of the weekend. I actually expect
Kung Fu Panda's numbers to rise significantly today, because this is
traditionally the biggest day of the weekend for family films, meaning we could
see a repeat of Sex's $56 million performance from a week ago, even with
Sarah Jessica Parker's $6 million head start.
As for Zohan, $15 million is nothing to sneeze
at. If it were in the same number of theaters as Kung Fu Panda, that
number would be about $18 million. Still, Sandler's latest should open in the
$40 - $45 million range, a little higher than we gave it credit for in our
Thursday forecast, and enough to set him up for his sixth $100 million-earning
comedy in a row.
We predicted Sex and the City would continue to
tumble this weekend, and it has: $7 million on Friday compared to $26 million a
week ago. That's a 73% drop from last week, if my math is right, and that spells
doom for this movie after this stanza.
Indiana Jones might eclipse $250 million by the
end of the weekend, with about three weeks left of activity to see if it can hit
$300 million.
Iron Man most likely will get to that number
within the next two weeks. Incidentally, Iron Man is now the fourth highest
grossing comic book movie ever, behind the three Spider-Man films, and
comfortably ahead of Tim Burton's Batman.
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