website tracking
Search The Big Picture

« Don Cheadle Shows Stunt Double No Mercy in 'Traitor' Spoof on Jimmy Kimmel | Main | Movie Poster - 'He's Just Not That Into You' »
Thursday
28Aug2008

Fearless Forecast - Laboring Through Labor Day Weekend

DateThursday, August 28, 2008 at 12:22PM
OK, here's the deal: It's Labor Day. Hollywood, for whatever reason, has this misconception that people won't go see movies over the last pre-Thanksgiving holiday weekend. And I can't believe that, in 2008, all those multi-billion dollar multinationals still hold on to this business model. Here's a little secret, you to me: Some of the movies that do best on Labor Day weekend are movies from earlier in the summer. Why? The movies that come out on Labor Day aren't USDA grade A beef.

Last year, there were actually a couple new releases that did pretty well (Halloween, Balls of Fury), but in 2006, the carryover Invincible beat all newcomers, and Little Miss Sunshine and Pirates 2 saw significant increases in their audiences. The year before, The 40-Year-Old Virgin also sold more tickets over Labor Day than it had in the previous weekend, ditto March of the Penguins. In 2004, Hero became the first ever foreign language film to open atop the U.S. box office, and while I love the movie, that had more to do with a lack of new competition than anything else.

This year, I think Tropic Thunder could win its third weekend in a row - meaning we would have two number one films since July 18th - and The Dark Knight should post a good, solid increase over last weekend.

As always, the reason The Dark Knight and Tropic Thunder will make more money than they would on a normal weekend has less to do with it being Labor Day and gaining a few extra visitors on Monday and more to do with the new movies in theaters: Babylon A.D., Disaster Movie, and College.

Just imagine what Tropic Thunder could do if it had held its release two weeks and debuted now. It would've been the only thing people wanted to see. The theory, at least as I understand it, is Hollywood thinks this is the last weekend of the summer, so families head to the lake or have a cookout instead of going to the movies. OK, fair enough. Then don't release a family-friendly movie. Because college kids have only been on campus for a week or two, they're not going anywhere. Give them something to watch. After all, they're your target demographic anyway.

I'm making sense here, right?

Let's focus on what the lackluster box office will resemble this weekend. As I mentioned, Tropic Thunder has a chance to threepeat, which would be the most successive weeks at number one for a box office disappointment in a long time. To remain on top, it has to defeat Babylon A.D., which is reportedly testing well among - that's right - college aged males. Will the recent headlines about director Mathieu Kassovitz disavowing the Vin Diesel movie and the studio have an impact? It could among people who get a lot of their movie news online, where the story was a big deal. Guess who gets a lot of their movie news online. Yep: College aged males.

So while a $17 - $20 million opening was to be expected, I'm going to back off of that a bit. I'm not sure it will do that well.

Disaster Movie is another Movie movie, and the box office on these has been slowly deteriorating, and I can't see it picking up much here.

College is a throwaway; it will never been in more than 2,100 theaters, it's received very little promotion, and it's third in the pecking order on Hollywood's annual Mystery Meat Weekend. I don't like its chances.

So again, the door is open for The Dark Knight, and it's a momentous occasion for me, since I predicted six weeks ago that the Batman sequel would crash through the $500 million barrier on this very weekend, and it will do just that. By Tuesday morning, the film should be in the $505 - $507 million range, and if you want to jump on the $535 million bandwagon we put on the trail back about July 25th, it's filling up fast. I still have to think Warner Bros. will be smart enough to give this a Halloween push, and if so, I think we could get that number near $550 million.

The Top Five:

1 - Tropic Thunder ($17 million)

2 - Babylon A.D. ($15.5 million)

3 - Disaster Movie ($13 million)

4 - The Dark Knight ($12 million)

5 - The House Bunny ($8 million)

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , , , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment3 Comments |

Reader Comments (3)

U are very optimistic about TDN

Thursday, August 28, 2008 | Unregistered Commentermanuel

Studios might also be hesitant about debuting big movies on Labor Day weekend -not because of the weekend itself- but because of every weekend after it.

It's often considered the last big weekend of the season, so putting out your big $ picture out at the very end of the summer is like showing up at Disneyland an hour before closing time. You might have a heck of an hour, and there may be no lines, but once the hour's up...

Thursday, August 28, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterVoteLibertarian

Wow , it's Labor Day! I'm enjoying my extra day off, and I am planning to doing something fun that will probably involve a bike ride and seeing something new in Little River I haven't seen yet.
You write something new on a Monday at the labor day? ... happY blogGing!

Sunday, September 6, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterakvatino

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>