Summer Box Office Contest Week 3

[Jedi Master Carr]

Third weekend here now. Here is last week's top 5
1 1 Iron Man $51,190,629
2 N What Happens in Vegas $20,172,474
3 N Speed Racer $18,561,337
4 2 Made of Honor $8,116,323
5 Baby Mama $6,225,790

Only one New Release The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Picks due by 9PM PST on Friday, good luck.

[Crusader]

Cough cough: You have copy and pasted the wrong numbers :D

[Jedi Master Carr]

lol sorry I will change it.

[Atreyu]

1. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian $95.53m
2. Iron Man $27.95m
3. What Happens in Vegas $11.85m
4. Speed Racer $8.68m
5. Made of Honor $4.45m

[CMJ]

1. Prince Caspain - 93.90M
2. Iron Man - 29.22M
3. What Happens in Vegas - 12.08M
4. Speed Racer - 8.81M
5. Made of Honor - 5.01M

[Lilaena De'Ville]

1. Prince Caspian - $92.19
2. Iron Man - $28.54
3. What Happens in Vegas - $10.98
4. Speed Racer - $7.87
5. Made of Honor - $4.75

[Jedi Master Carr]

1. Prince Caspain - 100.72M
2. Iron Man - 27.44M
3. What Happens in Vegas - 13.99M
4. Speed Racer - 7.11M
5. Made of Honor - 6.21M

[Yog]

1. Prince Caspian: $84.32M
2. Iron Man: $26.15M
3. What Happens in Vegas: $10.55M
4. Speed Racer: $6.55M
5. Made of Honor: $5.45M

[Liam Jinn]

1. Prince Caspian - $78.15
2. Iron Man - $24.73
3. What Happens in Vegas - $9.33
4. Speed Racer - $7.04
5. Made of Honor - $4.11

[Jedi Master Carr]

looks like we are going to have two extremes this week.

[Crusader]

1. Prince Caspian: $80.05M
2. Iron Man: $26.65M
3. What Happens in Vegas: $11.35M
4. Speed Racer: $6.55M
5. Made of Honor: $6.015M

[Ryan Pode]

1. Prince Caspain - 104.05M
2. Iron Man - 23.74M
3. What Happens in Vegas - 12.45M
4. Speed Racer - 8.40M
5. Made of Honor - 5.45M

[Yog]

Friday Estimates:
1. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - $19,300,000
2. Iron Man - $8,600,000
3. What Happens in Vegas - $4,600,000
4. Speed Racer - $2,000,000
5. Made of Honor - $1,525,000
6. Baby Mama - $1,500,000

Narnia 2 opens slow, should make something in the 60M range over the weekend. Might even struggle to make 200M total after this. Speed Racer continues to bomb with a big drop. Iron Man held ok, looking good for 300M total.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

We're going to go see Prince Caspian today - we're having a record heat wave so it should be a fairly busy weekend at the movie theatre.

[Jedi Master Carr]

I went to see it today and it was crowded. I think it will do better today and tomorrow, but I don't see anything more than 65-68 million right now. I thought sure it do at least 75. I think they opened it in the wrong time of the year. Narnia seems a better fit in the winter. This isn't Harry Potter which has a massive fan base and can open any time of the year. I say it barely breaks 200. The only thing that Disney has to look forward to is the overseas numbers where it could rack in 500-600 million over there.

[Atreyu]

Estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com:

1. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - $56,573,000
2. Iron Man - $31,200,000
3. What Happens in Vegas - $13,850,000
4. Speed Racer - $7,645,000
5. Baby Mama - $4,593,000
6. Made of Honor - $4,500,000

Looks like we all crashed right out on Caspian - I missed by nearly $40m. :cryAlso looks like it's gonna come down to the wire for Baby Mama and Made of Honor too.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

:shakefist CMJ beat me out on Iron Man :grumble

[Crusader]

Iron Man has got some nice legs.

[Jedi Master Carr]

Weekend Actuals
1 The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian $55,034,805
2 Iron Man $31,838,996
3 What Happens in Vegas $13,883,874
4 Speed Racer $8,117,459
5 Made of Honor $4,702,950



Accuracy Points
# 1 - 25 pts: Liam Jinn(The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian)
# 2 - 20 pts: CMJ (Iron Man)
# 3 - 15 pts: Jedi Master Carr (What Happens in Vegas)
# 4 - 10 pts: Lilaena De'Ville (Speed Racer)
# 5 - 5 pts: Lilaena De'Ville (Made of Honor)

Weekend Points
Liam Jinn 50
CMJ 45
Lilaena De'Ville 40
Jedi Master Carr 40
Ryan Pode 25
Crusader 25
Atreyu 25
Yog 25




Contest Totals (Remember only top 12 scores are counted)
CMJ: 125
Jedi Master Carr: 110
Liam Jinn: 110
Ryan Pode: 80
Yog: 80
Crusader: 80
Atreyu: 65
Lilaena De'Ville: 65

If anything looks wrong let me know.

Very Close Race we have going. And with Memorial day coming up someone could go from the bottom to the top pretty easily. I am going to have to post the next contest by tomorrow morning since Indy comes out Thursday.

[Jedi Master Carr]

Estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com:

1. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian - $56,573,000
2. Iron Man - $31,200,000
3. What Happens in Vegas - $13,850,000
4. Speed Racer - $7,645,000
5. Baby Mama - $4,593,000
6. Made of Honor - $4,500,000

Looks like we all crashed right out on Caspian - I missed by nearly $40m. :cryAlso looks like it's gonna come down to the wire for Baby Mama and Made of Honor too.



I figured I do this seperate since we have to pause and wonder what went wrong with Narnia? The first film made 65 million and looked to be the next Potter. Sure COS dropped off from SS but this looks to be an even bigger drop off. I personally think it is three reasons.
1 Release date: Narnia is just better suited for the Winter. I know the last Potter movie made almost 300 this past summer, but Potter has a massive fanbase which Narnia just doesn't have. If this had been released in December I think it would have opened to about 60-70 and made close to 300 million.

2 Marketing: I never thought much on this when looking at this movie but the Marketing was horrible. They only released one trailer and the Tv spots were very poor and didn't do much to show off anything. They also seemed to focus too much on the unknown Ben Barnes as Prince Caspian, perhaps trying to draw in Teenage girls (which is a really stupid thing to try. I know the Potter films have tried this and haven't had much better success getting them in the theaters). I think with better marketing this film could have opened higher.

3 Poor starpower. When your two most famous actors are voicing talking animals you got problems. I doubt anybody knew Liam Neeson or Eddie Izzard were in this movie so that sure didn't help. Of the live actors only really Warwick Davis is known but that is because of being in Star Wars and Harry Potter films. They should have picked bigger actors to play the two villains or at least character actors. They guys they got were actors who very few people in the states are familiar with.
So what are everybody else's opinions?

[Lilaena De'Ville]

I think its the winter vs. summer thing as well. The first few Potter movies they released in the summer didn't do nearly as well as the Thanksgiving time ones.

The star power thing... no I don't think so. If that were the case then The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe would have done poorly as well. Tilda Swinton wasn't exactly a household name before she was in the movie.

I hope/think it will have pretty good legs despite its poorer opening, although with Indy crashing into theatres on Thursday who knows?

[CMJ]

Still leading. Hoping for back to back titles. :D

[Jedi Master Carr]

I think its the winter vs. summer thing as well. The first few Potter movies they released in the summer didn't do nearly as well as the Thanksgiving time ones.

The star power thing... no I don't think so. If that were the case then The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe would have done poorly as well. Tilda Swinton wasn't exactly a household name before she was in the movie.

I hope/think it will have pretty good legs despite its poorer opening, although with Indy crashing into theatres on Thursday who knows?

Well I think a star would have helped balance it off. And yeah the first summer Potter movie didn't do that well. Azkaban made 249 which is a huge drop off from SS. OOTP didn't get hurt by the summer but I think some of that is a combination of the final book came out and the previous two films were more well liked. We shall see about Narnia. I have always thought the third and 4th books were the best of the series.

[Atreyu]

Very Close Race we have going. And with Memorial day coming up someone could go from the bottom to the top pretty easily. Yeah ... I think I need all the help I can get at the rate I'm going. :p

Re: Narnia's performance - I think Carr covered most of it. One other thing I might add is perhaps that 'Prince Caspian' isn't as highly known or regarded as 'The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe', which might be another reason it didn't perform as well. I never read the Narnia books as a kid, however I knew (plus pretty much everyone else I grew up with) all about the latter, but I knew practically nothing about any other books in the series.

I guess I'm just wondering whether LW&W was a one off in terms of name recognition that the other Narnia books fail to have.

On a related note, who wants to bet that Disney now moves 'Voyage of the Dawntreader' from it's current May 2010 spot?

[Jedi Master Carr]

Very Close Race we have going. And with Memorial day coming up someone could go from the bottom to the top pretty easily. Yeah ... I think I need all the help I can get at the rate I'm going. :p

Re: Narnia's performance - I think Carr covered most of it. One other thing I might add is perhaps that 'Prince Caspian' isn't as highly known or regarded as 'The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe', which might be another reason it didn't perform as well. I never read the Narnia books as a kid, however I knew (plus pretty much everyone else I grew up with) all about the latter, but I knew practically nothing about any other books in the series.

I guess I'm just wondering whether LW&W was a one off in terms of name recognition that the other Narnia books fail to have.

On a related note, who wants to bet that Disney now moves 'Voyage of the Dawntreader' from it's current May 2010 spot?

I think they need to put it back in the winter and probably will.

[Atreyu]

I think they need to put it back in the winter and probably will.
I agree - do you think Christmas 2009 or Christmas 2010? I feel the latter is leaving an awful big gap (over 2.5 yrs) between the films, but the former is pushing it forward 5 months early (not sure if they would effect production or not).

[Yog]

I have been talking for 3 months now how Narnia 2 would disappoint, so this is not surprising at all for me. While I did not expect 55M, I saw 60-70M range within the realm of possible. Would have edited my pick with a lower number just to be lowest if I were not so tired and went to sleep.

Anyway, what went wrong? Everything! The sequel was doomed right after the first movie premiered. While it was a good movie, it was not good and epic enough to get people excited for a sequel, let alone multiple ones. Fantasy "Chapter" installments are for the geeks, and only Potter fans get away with that, due to their huge fanbase. LOTR series are the most read book after the bible AND the movies were epic timeless classics, so they not only got away with it, but were very successful. The fantasy genre is a notorious tough market, even more so when you attempt making it big budget.

Chronicles of Narnia was a 143 minute "first chapter" instead of just one big epic movie, which it should have been. Really, if you want to go into depth of the lore, there are the TV series produced by BBC which were much better. Atreyu is also right about the first book being far more widely recognized and read than the others.

This disaster took a turn for the worse however, when they squeezed it between Indy 4 and Ironman in the start of the summer season. A fantasy movie in the frikkin month of may when everyone is getting excited about action blockbusters in the summer. What were they thinking? People nowadays don't want to spend the time and money to go to the movies every week. Most pick the ones they want to see the most, and Caspian lost to those two other big boys real bad. And to top it off, the marketing was awful. I have not even SEEN any marketing for it over here, US is probably a different story, but still.

[Crusader]

^^ I agree 100% on Yogs statement.
Like I said before after Eragon(which I somehow liked), the Golden Compass(which I have not see yet) and especially Narnia the epic fantasy bonus is exhausted. So after the years of the king we are back to normal again.
This is an adventure and comic book movie year anyway. Indiana Jones rocked... and by the way congratulations to the marketing department of the new Mummy movie: Putting a well composed trailer right infront of Indy after making nearly no marketing at all is a pretty brave decision but it worked for me.
The Mummy 3 is definetly on my radar now.

I think Indy 4 has opened up the door for future adventure films making more money than expected. I think I will put higher bets on films of this genre during the season.

[Jedi Master Carr]

^^ I agree 100% on Yogs statement.
Like I said before after Eragon(which I somehow liked), the Golden Compass(which I have not see yet) and especially Narnia the epic fantasy bonus is exhausted. So after the years of the king we are back to normal again.
This is an adventure and comic book movie year anyway. Indiana Jones rocked... and by the way congratulations to the marketing department of the new Mummy movie: Putting a well composed trailer right infront of Indy after making nearly no marketing at all is a pretty brave decision but it worked for me.
The Mummy 3 is definetly on my radar now.

I think Indy 4 has opened up the door for future adventure films making more money than expected. I think I will put higher bets on films of this genre during the season.

I don't think Fantasy is dead though since we got three more Potter films and two more Hobbit Films. Those 5 movies could make over 5 billion dollars combined, the problem is there doesn't seem to be another series after the big two. I thought Narnia would do better. Honestly, I thought it do at least 75. I went crazy with my prediction for various reasons. I really think it should be moved to the winter. I think the third one will be probaly in 2010. I think in the winter it could have made 275-300.