Box Office - A Friday Coming Out Party for 'Brüno'

It doesn't look as though we'll have a heated race for the top spot at the domestic box office this week. Brüno, while probably coming in a little lower than my projections, is still going to have a fairly easy time of it, kicking off its debut with $14.2 million, according to Showbiz Data. I pegged this one starting a little bit higher, in the $16 million range, so my $40 million estimate might be a tad high. It could still do that much if there's no drop from Friday to Saturday, but given every reason you could compare this to Borat, the $14 million isn't all that strong. Sacha Baron Cohen's last movie opened with a $26 million total in roughly one-third of the theaters Brüno occupies. So head-to-head it's not fantastic and put through the filter of kind of being a sequel of sorts (in terms of audience awareness and expectations), I think Universal had hopes that it would come out (ha!) a little stronger. The comedy will still win the weekend; its closest competition is six million bucks behind after one day. Ice Age, as expected, will do mid- to high-20s this time around. Transformers should end the weekend in third place around $335 million overall. As we've discussed, once Harry Potter arrives on Wednesday, this one's kind of done, although it's pretty much just going through the motions as it is. $108 million 14 days ago and now it may not make 20% of that. Ouch. If it had held its audience the way Star Trek did in weekends two and three, Transformers would be approaching $375 million by Sunday. All they had to do was make a good movie, honest. There aren't very many other headlines after the Friday results, but I suppose one thing worth noting is that The Proposal has now cleared $100 million, making it the top romantic comedy since Four Christmases, which it should pass in another week or so. We'll give you the full rundown tomorrow.