Fearless Forecast: 'Potter' Riding on Fumes, 'Funny People' Laughs Last

Every Thursday, we try to predict what the weekend box office will look like. Sometimes we miss the mark, sometimes we're really accurate. But as it relates to Harry Potter, I was just wrong. I thought Half-Blood Prince would do better than every other movie in the series except the first one, but the longer it goes the more ho-hum the new film's box office appears. Opening weekends are their own entities, and they're usually a better indicator of the film's marketing than anything else. A good rule of thumb is if a movie makes 33% of its total box office or less in the first three days, it has really resonated with the audience. If your opening weekend is 40% of the gross, people weren't as interested after the initial blast and the movie couldn't stand on its own. This summer, The Hangover earned 18% of its current gross in the first frame, while Transformers is in the 40 - 50% range, depending on how you count the first five days rather than a traditional weekend. Potter is losing steam and through fifteen days has earned $233 million, 68% of which came in the first five days, and 25% of the total was opening day business. Even if the film makes it to $300 million, which doesn't seem like a sure thing, almost 20% of the receipts would be from July 15th. It doesn't have any legs, and that really surprises me. Will the new IMAX release help Potter? Not in the long run. If people have already lost interest, that won't suddenly regenerate because the same movie is now on a bigger screen and has become more expensive. There are three new releases in theaters this weekend, none of which will merit that kind of scrutiny. The big ticket is Funny People, which should do really well for three reasons, it's an R-rated comedy by Judd Apatow starring Adam Sandler. Apatow and Sandler share a lot of audience, but it's not a 100% match. So if the carryover from each comes out to support this, it will be a money maker. The kid-friendly Aliens in the Attic and the horror movie The Collector seem to be genretastic, so apply the current standard for lesser known family movies and limited release slasher flicks to those. The Top Five:
1 - Funny People ($35 million)
2 - G-Force ($18 million)
3 - Harry Potter ($15 million)
4 - The Ugly Truth ($14 million)
5 - Aliens in the Attic ($10 million)

Update on Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 4:04PM by Get The Big Picture

FYI: The first day of Potter's IMAX numbers are in. Looks like the total box office for Wednesday was about $4.6 million. That's up around $500,000 over Tuesday's results. I don't know what the specific totals are for standard format vs. IMAX, but the bump is probably a direct result of that. We'll watch that number over the weekend, but maybe a million bucks on its IMAX opening day isn't that big a push.

Comments

[SEAN]

See ive said it before and Ill say it again...

It seems as though the BIG BIG budget movies aren't making their BIG expectations they're just not for some reason and many examples in 2009 prove this..

But the smaller movies are making more and more money...

[Chad]

i just saw harry potter and movie was probably my least favoritre in the series. I mean if you want to make money its best to cook with the right ingredients and this movie was god awful. I mean hermione i can't believe how little she was in the movie no wonder emma almost didn't come back for the last movie. And the supporting characters were nearly nonexistent. This new director has really just dropped the ball on these last couple movies. I remember after watching order of the pheonix thinkins wow nothing happened this whole movie. all that happened was people found out voldemort was alive which we already knew in the 4th, And this movie seemed even more pointless. Other than a few key events i nearly fell asleep during this movie.

[Lengthy Johnson]

I am not surprised.

The Order of the Phoenix turned me off the new direction of the Potter series. I thought that it looked and felt empty compared to the best films in the series, i.e. Goblet of Fire and Prisoner of Azkaban.

Because I really didn't like Order of the Phoenix, I have avoided this one, it's slated for winter viewing on BD with a stiff egg nog.

I also believe that WB were too clever when they post-poned the opening of the film to maximise the audience. It probably would have done better if they had released it when it was ready with the natural amount of anticipation surrounding the production process.

The worst news is that there are two more of these coming.

[Chad]

i agree with lengthy on his post. Particularly about the bit about the anticipation kinda killing the buzz. If they would of released in November I think it would be doing marginally better