Box Office - 'Tropic Thunder' Suffering Olympic Fever?

We scoffed at last week's run-and-hide approach employed by Pineapple Express and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, hoping to avoid Olympic Fever by opening on Wednesday. It's hard to say whether or not the Olympics really would have caused a lot of damage to a traditional weekend, but we're not laughing this week. Michael Phelps has been in the water. Yes, the swimmer's assault on history may come at the expense of Tropic Thunder. The new Ben Stiller-directed comedy co-starring Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. has not exploded the way a movie of its caliber normally would. There are really only two logical explanations: Michael Phelps and the Stiller Backlash that also sunk (pardon the pun) The Heartbreak Kid last fall. Tropic Thunder will most likely still be a big hit, but its numbers since Wednesday are nowhere near what I would've thought. According to Box Office Mojo, we're looking at $8.2 million on Friday and a three-day total of right around $20 million. The five-day weekend is below $40 million for the new comedy, which I predicted would beat the $41 million performance last weekend by Pineapple Express. It's still possible, because these numbers are just estimates, but if the prospective audience stayed home to watch Michael Phelps win gold medal number seven on Friday, why would they run out and watch a movie on Saturday when he's bucking for his eighth? The Olympic storyline has some teeth across the board this weekend, as nothing has done overwhelmingly strong business, and no, the teeth reference has nothing to do with our Olympic hero's constantly agape mouth. Star Wars: The Clone Wars opened in second place with an estimated $6.2 million, which would give it an opening weekend number in the $20 million range; Mirrors opened with $4.2 million, and is on pace to barely crack the top five horror movie openings in 2008; even The Dark Knight showed some vulnerability, although its $5 million Friday will still guarantee at worst a third-place weekend finish. Here are a few other things to consider heading into the rest of the weekend. The Dark Knight will beat Star Wars on Saturday to become the second-highest-grossing film in U.S. history, a feat it will have accomplished in exactly 30 days. Curiously, that could happen on the same weekend The Clone Wars beats The Dark Knight head-to-head. Our week two prediction that the film will make well over $500 million is holding up quite nicely, thank you. On Thursday, we said it was a bad move by Fox to not screen Mirrors for critics. Even if the press hates it, you're still getting some front page coverage in the paper. For free. Fox turned that down and Mirrors, which stars one of the biggest names Fox has at the ready in Kiefer Sutherland, might have a worse opening weekend than Shutter and One Missed Call. I'd be embarrassed if I worked in marketing for this movie. It's early, but it doesn't appear that The Clone Wars will draw casual fans of Star Wars in any real way. This one is shaping up to be a "fans only" experience. What would a sub-$40 million weekend mean for Tropic Thunder in the long term? The movie is lucky in one respect: There aren't any comedies with this kind of profile getting so many positive reviews coming to theaters for a month or more. It still has time to make up some of the ground it potentially lost in its debut. So, I'd say $150 million is too high a number, but $120 million is probably still possible. We'll break down the entire weekend and measure more of the impact of the Olympics on Sunday.

Comments

[The Farelly Brothers]

Let's face facts; The Heartbreak Kid was primarily OUR fault :(...who do you think was responsible for casting Carlos Mencia?

[Paguila]

Tropical Thunder will be a hit. I watched it already and all of us in the cinema laughed every other minute. Stiller. Jr. Black, and specially Cruise are funny and immersed into their crazy characters.

[Helen]

This just proves that many Americans are to classy to support such garbge. I hope it continues to bomb!