Box Office - 'Hangover' Wins, Crosses $100 Million

The news continues to be good for The Hangover, which this weekend became the first movie this summer to repeat as the top choice at the box office. In ten days, the bachelor party comedy has tripled its budget, zooming past $100 million, and in doing so has outperformed one of the strongest performers in Pixar's history. The Hangover made $33 million this weekend, according to the Box Office Mojo estimates. That's enough of a cushion to declare it the weekend winner; last weekend, you'll recall, Up looked like the number one movie, but the totals were so close in the estimates that The Hangover actually won when the receipts were finally counted on Monday. Up finished in second place, about $3 million back. Through three weekends, only Finding Nemo had a better run for Pixar movies than Up has, and it will exceed $200 million by the time next weekend rolls around. I was surprised to see that The Taking of Pelham 123 cost $100 milion. For an action movie with no action, that's way too much money. Of course, the combo of Denzel and Travolta doesn't come free, but the huge budget probably isn't going to hurt this one in the long run. The good news for Sony is those stars draw crowds around the world, so the foreign release on this movie is bigger than a lot of summer movies this year. As it stands in the U.S., Pelham 123 earned $25 million, which is more or less what it was always going to make, regardless of the competition. But I have a feeling it will sink like a stone. The other wide release of the weekend is Eddie Murphy's Imagine That, and nobody did imagine it, let alone go to see it: For the second straight summer, a Murphy family comedy with a $50 million-plus budget opened with a meager $5 million. In three of the past seven summers, Murphy has delivered one of the bigger bombs of the season, with Pluto Nash being one of the all-time box office catastrophes. The Top Five:
1 - The Hangover ($33.4 million)
2 - Up ($30.5 million)
3 - The Taking of Pelham 123 ($25 million)
4 - Night at the Museum ($9.6 million)
5 - Land of the Lost ($9.1 million)

Comments

[andrew]

great job with your box office analysis. keep it up.

could you do an update on the hangover's total box office (similar to what you did for star trek)? that'd be interesting to read about.

thanks!

[Get The Big Picture]

Yeah, I'll do one tomorrow, once the 10-day actuals are in.