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If these estimates are accurate, Hairspray could take the weekend.

The surprise of License to Wed is one of the few predictions I got right this summer. I wish I was wrong, but I have heard people talk about it. When my mom was in town recently I took her to the movies. We looked at the posters:

Nicol's Mom: "Ohhh, that Bruce Willis sure looks good. He's aged really well."

Nicol: Great mom. Yeah he looks good bald.

Nicol's Mom: He looks really good bald.

Nicol: Sure mom. I don't think you wanna see Die Hard. That's not your speed. People die in it, What do you want to see?

Nicol's Mom: That Robin Williams as the priest sure looks funny. He's such a funny guy that Robin Williams. Y'know he talked a mile a minute when he was on Larry King the other night.

Nicol: Uhmmmm, I dunno if I wanna see that.

Nicol's Mom: But it looks soooo funny. With his feet on the bed in between the young couple. That Robin Williams is really funny y'know.

Nicol: Mom, I think you'd like the rat cartoon instead.

Nicol's Mom: Ohhhhh rats. I don't know about that. They're creepy.

Nicol: No mom. Robin Williams as a priest in bed with Mandy Moore and some guy is creepy. Let's see the rat movie. You'll like it. We can eat the cheese you snuck in.

Nicol's Mom: Ohhhh okay.

Nicol: Two for Ratatouille, please.

She loved the show and I thought it was the best movie of the summer.

License to Wed is going to top out at $50m. How does a gross that soft translate into a surprise summer comedy hit?

Hairspray definitely exceeded all my expectations at the beginning of the summer. It didn't turn out to be such a "surprise" hit because I think more and more people saw this one coming, but it still did above what anybody thought which I suppose makes it a bit of a surprise. Dave called this one when he saw the promo, so I'll give him credit, even if it didn't turn out to be Wedding Crashers-sized it still was an eye-opener.

the harry potter gross cieling is definitely finite but there's also a big problem releasing it in the summer. Summer or pre-thanksgiving you get pretty much the same opening number, but the difference is that over the Thanksgiving holiday familys together will see Harry Potter, whereas in the summer, more will just drop off the kids at the theatre than make it a family trip. Those extra few mom and dad tickets in the holiday season make up the difference between HPs summer and winter grosses.

I'm glad Nicol D isn't an aspiring screenwriter.

Nicol's Mom sounds like she's apart of that 20% who still believes in the President. I bet she watches Leno, too. She sounds like the type of lady I get stuck behind at the conession stand, acting as if she doesn't know what they serve. I feel like yelling, "Just get the damn pop corn lady!"

Didn't RV have surprising legs, too? Maybe the Robin Williams crowd likes to wait weeks before going to the theater?

"Who figured License to Wed for a $45m - $50m grosser?"

anyone who has spent more than five minutes looking at the box office of robin williams comedies.

Fair enough, anghus. A little bit of a reach considering its only his fourth comedy this millenium and only one did more than $38m... and that was a pure family play. But still, pretty fair, big picture.

"The last summer Potter film dropped 70% First Friday to Second Friday… with almost no competition in the marketplace. What kept this drop smaller was the expanded opening to Wednesday, which made the Friday less precocious."

Uhh, Dave...the second weekend of the other summer Harry Potter movie (3rd one) actually faced one of the severest competitive weekends ever in recent box office history.

Weekend Rank Film Studio Weekend Gross Percentage Drop # of theatres # of theatres lost Theater average Total Gross Weekends in Theater
#1 3rd Harry Potter WB $34,910,393 -62.7% 3855 N/A $9,055 $157,975,042 2

#2 Chronicles of Riddick Uni $24,289,165 N/A 2757 N/A $8,809 $24,289,165 1

#3 Shrek 2 DW $23,316,920 -38.5% 3843 -288 $6,607 $353,333,317 4

#4 Garfield: The Movie Fox $21,727,611 N/A 3094 N/A $7,022 $21,727,611 1

#5 The Stepford Wives Par $21,406,781 N/A 3057 N/A $7,002 $21,406,781 1

#6 The Day After Tomorrow Fox $14,538,226 -47.8% 3210 -234 $4,529 $153,144,814 3

You had three new films make $20+million, Shrek 2 making $20+million in its 4th weekend, The Day After Tomorrow making $14+million in its 3rd weekend, and all of these films were PG or PG-13.

All of the other Top 10 films during that June 11th 2004 weekend made a total of around $115 million under Harry Potter 3. So, Harry Potter 3 actually faced pretty severe competition. (Facts from Boxofficemojo.com)

Whod've thought that the first musical of the new decade to become a bonafide hit without the use of awards season would involve John Waters and John Travolta in fat drag?

Oh, and I thought Sunshine was going wide this week?

Nicol, I hope you reslize, your mom stil hss reslly conservative tastes. Robin William, my goodness!

I totally recommend Sunshine. I saw it months ago (sometime in March I think).

Sorry for typos.

I would recommend people see the first half of Sunshine and then realise you need to go wash your hair or something because the second half was a ridiculous overblown mess.

Ten theaters for Sunshine? No wonder it wasn't playing within 10 hours driving distance! Man, they should've either released it with the UK release or held off until late August or early September. Limited rollout is NOT going to work right here, right now, and the market's too packed for a wide release. To me, it just seems like they're flushing a movie that could've made SOME money (And it's reasonably inexpensive as far as sci-fi goes) down the toilet. Looks like I wait for DVD....

It could have easily made Serenity-sized numbers.

Perhaps the DVD is coming out soon and they thought they'd lose revenue? But that still doesn't explain the limited rollout.

Sunshine should be experienced in cinemas. The special effects of the sun alone is well worth the price of the ticket. But being in 10 theaters!!! I read back when it was released in the UK that it hardly made any money. I don't recall why. I agree with Kamikaze that the second half is overblown (literally, with lots of explosions), but I wouldn't call it a mess. I'm going to stop here before I spoil the film.

On the other hand, Goya's Ghost, what a horrible film. I can't even describe what it's about. And Natalie Portman's performance is pathetic.

Wasn't mentioned but in one day, Hairspray has come within a million dollars to the opening weekend record for a musical (which is about $11.8 million). By now, it's already taken the record.

Jeff, I didn't know you spoke Parseltongue!

"Nicol, I hope you reslize, your mom stil hss reslly conservative tastes."

Confused the rubbing alcohol with the gin again, didya Jeff? It's rough being alone on Saturday night.

"Nicol's Mom sounds like she's apart of that 20% who still believes in the President."

Well, at least I know she's not in that high percentile that believes he called in American fighter jets to take down the WTC. Tell me Jimmy, what do hope to see Rosie in next?

david, i don't know the computations or theory that goes into box office prediction. but when i look at robin williams' past numbers i had to think it would make somewhere between Man of the Year and RV, if only because Williams' best films have the words 'family friendly' in them.

Smoochy was not a family film and far too dark for it's own good and Man of the Year was criticlaly maligned and made it just shy of 40.

If the film plays to families and doesn't play too dark, i'd put it 30 without a second thought. If Knocked Up hadn't opened ahead of it and been so universally loved, it might have done even better. It's the low earning counterprogramming flick, the inoffensive comedy.

I just checked the showtimes and tickets part of the official Sunshine page and it said the 27th was the nation-wide release date. I doubt it's going to be that wide, though.

Yeah, Sunshine was scheduled as a wide release on 7/20 for awhile (after they moved it up from fall '07 after pushing it out of spring '07 after pushing it out of 2006, whew!), and then they scaled it back to ten theaters a few weeks beforehand (we call this "Weinstein style," though it was Fox Searchlight in this case). Now it's going to platform, I guess, though as Joe Straat says, it probably won't be that wide. It's times like this that I'm thankful to live in expensive, crowded NYC; I saw Sunshine yesterday while waiting for Harry Potter 7 to turn up on my doorstep, and really liked it -- but then, I tend to love Boyle's work. I had read a few reviews that said it sort of went off the tracks at the end, and Boyle movies tend to go a little off-the-rails right before they end, so I was surprised to find it one of his less wacked-out climaxes. I had no big problems with it (well, the characters weren't very well-developed, but even that was done in sort of a smart, minimalist way, rather than with cheesy expositional dialogue or something). Definitely one of the year's ten best so far, though I'm not sure if it'll stick around through the end of the year.

Plus, I saw that Darjeeling Limited trailer. Yes!

Did Fox get Sunshine out this week so it wouldn't compete with The Simpsons the following week?

i just saw the weekend numbers.

Universal's two comedies have seemed to cancel each other out.

Any profit made from the affordable Knocked Up was sucked up by the obscenely budgeted Evan Almighty.

I think your last sentence is the best one, Anghus... it's a counterprogrammer with low expectationswith a guy who is still a star on some level. It's the only easy choice for someone female and/or over 30 looking for something light aftr Knocked Up.

The Sunshine release strategy is a weird one. The film did nicely this weekend, but the 10 theatre count expanding to 400 next weekend is something I've never seen.

"Rescue Dawn" also goes national next week but will stay limited.

"Who figured License to Wed for a $45m - $50m grosser?"

Well, as long as you're asking, check out the threads from your original summer charts. I said it would gross 4x your projected $13 million total. And that's before I saw the trailer and realized how awful it looked.

Just sayin'...

EthanG, it's a word-of-mouth marketing strategy, as opposed to a burn-money marketing strategy.

well, a romantic comedy is always considered 'counter programming' in the summer. for the most part, unless the film is universally awful without a single, marketable aspect, you can still figure it for 15 million.

i think your prediction for 13 million would have been accurate if it was a film marketed solely on Kracinski and Mandy Moore. But still, it's Robin Williams that the film was being pushed on.

Not being a franchise, CGI filled, blockbuster, i still would have put it at 30 million because of content.

My point about Knocked Up is that you had this amazingly reviewed, exceptionally well recieved romantic comedy in the same vein as License to Wed (except it was good), and that Knocked up limited what License to Wed could make. Had Knocked Up not been released this Summer, License to Wed probably could have cleared another 20 million on top of what it already made.

And the 13 million dollar prediction seems incredibly silly in hindsight seeing as people spend far more on movies in the summer and just figuring there is a much higher percentage of people flooding into the theaters right now, even a turd starring Robin Williams would be capable of hitting 30 million even if it was completely irredeemable.

I mean shit. RV made 57 million. Did you see RV?

So, i can't quite figure the 'surprise' of license to wed.

Even complete train wrecks like Hostel 2 and Nancy Drew made upwards of 20 million. 13 million is a train wreck prediction. How many mainstream family comedies with a recognizable face do that poorly?

I guess we'll have an answer when DADDY DAY CAMP comes out.

Hostel Part 2 actually made only $17.6mil. Worldwide just under $30mil.

Still, sorry to bring up old wounds and such, but Dave predicted a similarly disastrous total for The Devil Wears Prada last year too.

But for every decision he was off about there are those where he was pretty spot on. We just need to look at this week's Hairspray to see that.

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