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Friday
17Jul2009

Box Office - Sophomore Slump for 'Potter'

DateFriday, July 17, 2009 at 11:26AM
As we predicted earlier this week, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince wouldn't quite do Transformers business on the first two days heading into the weekend. We already reported about the record $22 million midnight crowd that became a $58 million Wednesday, which is the fourth-best opening day ever. And now the Thursday numbers are in. And, boy, was there a drop off.

Again, I didn't expect it to do $90 million - $100 million before the weekend, so the fact that it has come back to Earth on Thursday doesn't surprise me, although when you stand the numbers side by side it looks like the bottom has dropped out. Potter made $22 million on Thursday in the U.S., a decline of over 60%.

That puts the grand total over $80 million in two days. When the worldwide totals are computed, Wednesday and Thursday will probably account for close to $150 million.

I'm not worried by large margin between opening day numbers and Thursday for three reasons:

1) We know how big the audience is for Harry Potter. The average U.S. haul for one of these movies is over $280 million. This should break $300 million, because Wednesday is basically a bonus day.

2) There's no competition for a good three weeks. Half-Blood Prince is the only summer blockbuster left.

3) Midnight showings have become a much bigger event in the past couple of years as they've shown success. It's likely the new record will only last a year, two at the most. More theaters are embracing the idea as fans want to be there first. What used to be limited to a couple thousand theaters at most is now over the 3,000 theater mark, and it will continue to grow for the next batch of major blockbusters. So, in a way, those numbers don't prove anything but that this is a big movie that people had the chance to see at midnight.

The numbers should rise again on Friday and Saturday, although whether or not it can average about $35 million a day over the weekend, I don't know. That's what it would need to do to make it to our $185 million five-day projection. But as we said yesterday, even if we're off by ten percent, it doesn't look like much to a movie that makes $30 million, but is magnified on this scale. I still believe it's going to pass $170 million for the first five days, regardless of the dip on Thursday.

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | CommentPost a Comment |

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