Sunday
13Jul2008
Box Office - 'Hellboy' More Super Than 'Hancock'
Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 10:30AM
We knew it would be a dogfight for the top spot at the
box office this weekend, and it turned out to be closer than we even expected.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which opened
strong on Friday, needed that leverage to fend off a charge from
Hancock on Saturday and Sunday. Although
Hellboy finished right around $36 million for the weekend, according to
Box Office Mojo, it only won the battle on
Friday and Sunday; Hancock outgrossed the new Guillermo del Toro film on
Saturday and finished the weekend with $33 million, which I believe makes this
the closest finish of the summer.
For Hancock, the weekend puts Will Smith closer
to another $200 million movie; it has now earned over $165 million in 12 days.
Hellboy still has a decent shot to break $100 million, although a lot of
that depends on how it can weather the storm once The Dark Knight arrives
next weekend. If it can put up a $15 million second stanza, it should be on its
way.
The other new releases,
Journey to the Center of the Earth and
Meet Dave, are headed in opposite directions.
Journey did better than expected and was the weekend's third $20 million
earner, not bad at all considering the family-friendly competition it's facing
with Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda. Meet Dave, as we touched on
yesterday, is a tax write off. $5.3 million is a terrible way to start if your
movie costs $100 million, although the good news for Eddie Murphy is that it
made $2 million on Saturday. Woo hoo!
Where does this put Meet Dave historically? We'll go
into more detail later today on just how a big a bomb we're dealing with.
The Top Five
1 - Hellboy II ($36 million)
2 - Hancock ($33 million)
3 - Journey to the Center of the Earth ($21
million)
4 -
Wall-E ($19 million)
5 -
Wanted ($12 million)
Update on Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 7:42PM by
Colin Boyd
Colin Boyd
Meet Dave has an incredibly shrinking budget.
What was once believed to be a $100 million effort by this website and several
other reports, has been reduced to either a $60 million and a $55 million film
in recent days, depending on what you believe. We'll go with the $55 million,
the number Fox is selling. So, this will not be a bomb of monumental
proportions, just a good old fashioned flop.
Reader Comments (7)
Meet Dave cost $100 million to make?
Who signed off on that???
that only means that the sequel of hellboy is not beating Hancock, and in the final of the summer we will have Hancock against The Dark Knight. I think none of these movies are goin' to beat Hancock. Good job will smith.
Meet Dave cost $60 million to make according to BoxOfficeMojo.
IMDB has it as $100 million, as do several other sources (although they might have snagged that number from IMDB). The $60 million is on both Box Office Mojo and Wikipedia. Why there's such a discrepancy, I have no idea. This wouldn't be one of the goofy IMDB facts that users add, I don't believe.
Curiously, the Wikipedia number, footnoted last year, was from IMDB. So, they claim $60 million based on a source that says $100. Maybe the initial budget was $60 million and it jumped up.
Alvin -
Hancock will be lucky to beat Kung Fu Panda, to say nothing of Iron Man, Indiana Jones, and Dark Knight. Hell, Dark Knight could make $165 million in its opening weekend...
How can a statement be made for the movies on Sunday when this article was posted on 10:30 AM PST on Sunday? These aren't final numbers.
They're estimates made by tracking previous films, previous weekends, and trends for the current weekend. They don't vary too wildly. It's not like that numbers a stab in the dark. Last week, for example, only movie in the top five was over a half million bucks different from the Sunday estimate.