Box Office - 'Princess and Frog' Leads Weak Friday

The Friday performance for The Princess and the Frog is pretty much right on target for our weekend prediction in the low- to mid-$20 millions. It led the charge on Friday with $7 million, although that's a pretty low number for December. I wonder if distributors not named Disney are second-guessing their releases and expansions on films like The Lovely Bones, Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, and Up in the Air after seeing that this weekend would have been up for grabs. For Disney, Princess and the Frog will probably play the way most of the studio's animated product does, with a healthier than average life expectancy that should reach into January. But $7 million - the number Variety reports this morning - is not a huge figure by any stretch of the imagination for a family film in over 3,400 theaters. The Blind Side continues to be the non-Twilight storyline of the fall, holding strong in second place, and on page for another $12 or $13 million. Being Heisman weekend in college football probably helps the movie, which has earned $140 million now. Here's a fun little exercise: Since November 23rd, the fourth day of release for Blind Side and New Moon, the football bio-pic has played the teenage vampires almost even ($103 million to $106 million), and by the end of the weekend, Blind Side will have outgrossed New Moon straight up after the opening weekend for both films. It's worth adding that Blind Side has been in 800 fewer theaters the entire time, meaning The Blind Side has been the more successful film over the last three weeks. That's just the domestic numbers, of course, and there's no real threat that a movie about American football will do huge business overseas (Warner Bros. doesn't even have a foreign release schedule at this point), but it's still a pretty good showing for The Blind Side. Clint Eastwood's Invictus is in third place after Friday, but it's not a great start: $2.9 million, which should translate to a sub-$10 million weekend. New Moon is fourth with $2.4 million and A Christmas Carol rounds out the top five for Friday with $1.7 million.

Comments

[Vince]

Argh, my gut feeling blinded me again; I guess this wasn't meant to make 30+ plus on opening weekend. Oh well, I still think that it'll hit $100 million when all is said and done.

"Invictus" will have a 4-5x multiplier if it gets Golden Globes/Oscar noms; if not, It'll make sub-$40 million.

Also, this is me being a stickler but it should say "It's worth adding that New Moon has been in 800 MORE theaters the entire time" as opposed to fewer, since New Moon is in 4000+ theaters, while Blind Side has been in less than 3500 theaters at one time.

[Get The Big Picture]

Oh, thanks. That is indeed what I meant.