Box Office - 'G.I. Joe' Earns $22 Million on Friday

After three weeks of self-doubt predicting the eventual winner of the weekend box office, I think I'm back on track thanks to G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Our Harry Potter numbers were way over the actual receipts for the first two weeks of its release and then Funny People was riding on a flat tire last weekend. But we said Joe would make about $53 million (the number in my head was $57 million, but I scaled it back at the last minute), and that seems to be about where this one is headed. After a $22 million Friday - which should beat the performance of every other movie in theaters for the entire weekend, G.I. Joe is poised to walk away with this three-day time frame with very little effort. Believing as we do that Friday will also be the biggest day this movie ever sees, we'll scale back the performance on both Saturday and Sunday to about $18 million and $14 million. That will still give Joe around $54 million, which is good but not really summer blockbuster good. In fact, presuming that G.I. Joe makes a third of its total box office revenue this weekend, a very basic but often accurate standard, this one won't even make money in the U.S. However, with a budget of $170 million, it will probably turn a profit before too long when you factor in the international receipts. Translation: A sequel is very likely. But when you stop to consider that this brand name is at least as influential on kids of the 1980s as Transformers, and the first movie in that series put up $120 million-plus in its first five days, the sun isn't shining so brightly on G.I. Joe, even though it will probably be the biggest movie this month. The only other story of note is Julie & Julia, which unlike G.I. Joe probably didn't spike on Friday. So look for something slightly higher than its respectable $6.5 million opening day result on Saturday, and a weekend total of about $20 million. We'll break it all down tomorrow.