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Monday
15Jun2009

'The Hangover' Will Get Oh-So-Close to $200 Million

DateMonday, June 15, 2009 at 7:27PM
Because it's the clear surprise hit of the summer - and may wind up being one of the top ten movies of the year at the box office - we thought we'd look ahead and try to predict how much coin The Hangover will make. We're on track with our $257 million domestic estimate for Star Trek, so we'll use the same approach to see where the finish line is for the comedy of the summer.

One problem with determining how much it will make is how unusual its production has been to this point. Its opening weekend was only the 20th best in the month of June, but after ten days, it's ahead of better than half the films in front of it on that list. And as far as its second weekend drop (27%), it's the best ever for a movie with a $40-million weekend in June, with the exception of Jurassic Park. So, yeah, we're kind of in unfamiliar territory here; there's just not much to compare it to.

Knocked Up and Wedding Crashers are probably the closest R-rated comedies, because Knocked Up had an early June release and made over $30 million in its first weekend, and Wedding Crashers hit $200 million and had a 24% second weekend drop. So that should tell us what we already knew: This thing will make between $150 and $200 million.

But Wedding Crashers held on in theaters for about five months. New Line doesn't release as many movies as Warner Bros., so if it's between New Line making some money or no money, it's going to keep Wedding Crashers in theaters longer. Warner Bros. has seven movies coming to theaters between now and October whereas New Line only had four movies after Wedding Crashers in the last half of 2005, and none of them were named Harry Potter.

One thing we know is that the next ten days will continue to be strong for The Hangover, but the weekdays will probably be off quite a bit from last Monday - Thursday. Who knows what will happen when Transformers comes out, and that's something else Wedding Crashers didn't have to deal with. Only three movies opened with $30 million weekends or more between August and November of 2005, and Saw II was the biggest movie in that span, with less than $32 million. The Hangover has two movies in the next four weeks that will open with $100 million or more, not to mention Public Enemies, Ice Age, and Bruno, so the $209 million mark seems very hard to attain.

But it has a puncher's chance at $200 million, depending on the Fourth of July weekend. I think The Hangover will be very competitive this weekend, and should put up another $20 - $23 million against Year One and The Proposal. Sandra Bullock has never had a $20 million opening and Tropic Thunder could only gut out $25 million last August with Jack Black and the suddenly hot Robert Downey, Jr.

Therefore, counting the daily totals, we should be around $140 million after two full weeks. And then it gets murky. Rather than go with a straight 40% drop across the board every week (which, though easy to apply, is a fairly accurate barometer), I had to take into account the mammoth competition it will face in the coming weeks.

But from this point forward, using a 13-week schedule, I have The Hangover making just under $95 million, with almost $62 million of that coming between now and July 5th. That gives us $199.69 million, good enough for the ninth -best finish for a Rated R movie ever, the sixth-best June movie in history, and just missing out on being one of the top ten comedies of all time.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment1 Comment |

Reader Comments (1)

thanks for the write up. interesting analysis - i liked how you used the competition in the upcoming weeks and previous comedies to estimate the total.

i think hangover might do even better than you think this weekend just cuz i feel the two movies coming out this weekend look like total crap. plus the buzz for the two movies can't be great at all.

anyways great job as always! are you going to do one possibly for Transformers and HP?

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterandrew

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