Weekend Box Office Report: 4/16/04 - 4/18/04

[Mole 0]

Mean Girls will do well. Lindsay's last movie, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, had horrible promotion. Mean Girls, however, will likely get better than normal reviews (written by Tina Fey), and has a better campaign.

Actually, Lohan has a pretty decent box-office numbers.

 

Parent Trap - $66 million

Freaky Friday - $110 million

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - $28 million

 

I think Mean Girls will do well for three reasons.

 

1) Young girls will want to see her.

2) Tina Fey wrote it and she has a following from SNL. (Just ask Bob Barron)

3) Lindsay = HOT, which might draw the male crowd.

 

I could see the movie making around $60 million, but no more than that. This spring is crowded with big movies, so that might hurt it. Granted it is a different audience, but it still might hurt it.

 

And next week's predictions:

 

1) Kill Bill Vol. 2

2) 13 Going on 30

3) Man on Fire

4) Johnson Family Vacation

5) The Punisher

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

Well, I hate to break it to you but "Family" movies aren't big box office movies. They have smaller budgets so they will make more money, but they aren't breaking many records.

 

Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone is the third highest grossing movie of all time worldwide ($968,600,000).

 

Other high ranking family films are Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets ($866,300,000 - #7), Finding Nemo ($853,200,000 - #9), the Lion King ($783,400,000 - #13), and ET ($756,700,000 - #14). That makes 5 family films in the top 15 grossing movies of all time. Looks pretty good. Only the fantasy genre in general, helped by three LOTR movies in the top ten (#2, #5 & #8) , the two Harry Potter films (#3 & #7), two Star Wars films (#4 & #12), Spider-Man (#11) and arguably the Matrix Reloaded (#15) did better.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

Alamo wasn't promoted as a Disney film though.

 

So that arguement holds no water. It's just a bad movie that shouldn't have been made.

Have you actually seen it? It is quite good, especially compared to the terrible John Wayne version. I'm not about to put it on my top ten of the year or anything, but it is nice little film based primarily on historical fact, with good actors (especially Billy Bob who is fantastic as Crockett) and compelling characters. The ending sequence is unecessary, Santa Anna is too cartoonish (although the rest of the Mexican officers are portrayed well), and the budget was certainly set too high, but it was a good film.

 

As for not being advertised under the Disney name, that had no impact. It was a Touchstone film, like Pearl Harbor or Armaggedon and people always refer to those as Disney movies. It was also well publicized that Eisner was worried that he would be ousted if this movie flopped, and that is incentive right there not to see it. That was a big problem. Even those few that didn't associate it with Disney would associate it with the trash that was Pearl Harbor, so the point still stands. Moving the release date was a bad idea. That sent a bad message right there. But I don't think that was all of it. If you remember, Titanic was pushed back from its original release date in July of 1997 and it didn't hurt it at all. I think the big issues with moving Alamo was that one, people thought that the movie was complete (and it may have been) and was moved because they were scared of LOTR, whereas with Titanic everybody knew that the movie went overbudget and wasn't finished yet. Secondly and perhaps more importantly, putting it out on Good Friday was stupid. Had it been released in late February or early March in time for the anniversary of the battle, I think things would have been better. It still wouldn't have made money because of the other problems, but it would have done better than it did.

[Mole 0]

Well, I hate to break it to you but "Family" movies aren't big box office movies. They have smaller budgets so they will make more money, but they aren't breaking many records.

 

Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone is the third highest grossing movie of all time worldwide ($968,600,000).

 

Other high ranking family films are Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets ($866,300,000 - #7), Finding Nemo ($853,200,000 - #9), the Lion King ($783,400,000 - #13), and ET ($756,700,000 - #14). That makes 5 family films in the top 15 grossing movies of all time. Looks pretty good. Only the fantasy genre in general, helped by three LOTR movies in the top ten (#2, #5 & #8) , the two Harry Potter films (#3 & #7), two Star Wars films (#4 & #12), Spider-Man (#11) and arguably the Matrix Reloaded (#15) did better.

Three things here:

 

1) I was doing domestic numbers because Choken was saying how 13 Going on 30 was going to make more money than Kill Bill, in domestic numbers next week. By the stats, action does better than family movies, even though 13 Going on 30 is a romantic comedy. (Choken said it was a family movie.)

 

2) I didn't include cartoons.

 

3) You used worldwide numbers.

 

We are both right, but I should have used WW numbers.

[Mik 0]

We are both right, but I should have used WW numbers.

Actually, Mole, I think you were correct in using domestic. It's what we post a thread about every week and discuss...not worldwide numbers.

[pochorenella 0]

I finally got around to buying Not Another Teen Movie, and that, coupled from what I've seen in the trailers, has finally convinced me to make this statement in full confidence:

 

 

Yep, I'm gonna say it:

 

 

Lacey Chabert is hotter than Jennifer Love Hewitt at this point.

 

There, I said it and I won't take it back

 

Man, I say take back that blasphemy right now!

 

Lacey Chabert is looking pretty good these days, but no way in hell is she hotter than Jennifer Love Hewitt. Specially if your judging by those 30 seconds or so of screen time Lacey had in NATM. I haven't seen trailers of that other movie you're talking about so I can't say anything else.

 

Take it back, man! Take it back!