Box Office - 'Hannah' on Pace for $40 Million

Hannah Montana > The Jonas Brothers. The Disney trio's recent film outing, a 3-D concert flick, only earned about $20 million and would be the lowest rated movie ever on IMDB if it had enough votes to qualify. The new Hannah Montana movie nearly made $19 million in one day. For the second straight weekend, and for about the fifth or sixth time this year, a new release has started its run much stronger than anyalysts have predicted. The trick is whether Hannah Montana can keep the momentum going for the next couple of days like Fast & Furious did last weekend. It's off to a great start - $17 million - and that could mean a $38 - $44 million weekend, about $10 million more than the teen idol was given credit for. That would knock Fast & Furious into the silver medal position through no fault of its own; if it falls short of $30 million in its second weekend, it would be a little disappointing, but the ten day total is likely to be around $120 million. The news is not good at all for Observe and Report and Dragonball. Both of them needed decent Friday starts to have strong weekends, and neither one of them got one. The new Seth Rogen dark comedy will only finish in the top five because there's not another wide release that's less than three weeks old ranking below it. A sub $5 million start - with Friday likely its strongest day - does not bode well. Dragonball was unceremoniously dumped by Fox into a couple thousand theaters, making less than $1,000 per screen on Friday. This movie will be lucky to make $6 million over the weekend, and almost certainly won't even make it to $20 million in total U.S. box office. We'll have the full recap tomorrow, taking a look at how this April shapes up historically. It's looking like another record month.