20th Century Fox's Live Free or Die Hard opened a bit softer than expected, making $8.86 million on Wednesday, and it will probably make around $5 million on Thursday so it'll be tough for it to get to the $38 to 41 million weekend predicted earlier this weekend. Reviews are mostly good and word-of-mouth isn't bad, and it'll get a few hundred more theatres, but with more competition on Friday, $35 million will probably be the ceiling and that might be pushing it.
That main competition comes from Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille, which will get close to 4,000 theatres and is likely to do as well or better than Cars last year. (You can read more box office updates after the jump.)
1. Ratatouille (Disney/Pixar) - $62.7 million N/A
2. Live Free or Die Hard (20th Century Fox) - $34.3 million N/A
3. Evan Almighty (Universal) - $15.2 million -53%
4. 1408 (Dimension) - $11.3 million -45%
5. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (20th Century Fox) - $9.2 million -54%
6. Knocked Up (Universal) - $7.1 million -35%
7. Ocean's Thirteen (Warner Bros.) - $6.0 million -47%
8. SiCKO (The Weinstein Company/Lionsgate) - $5.7 million N/A
9. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Disney) - $3.5 million -52%
10. Surf's Up (Sony) - $3.3 million -50%
11. Evening (Focus Features) - $2.9 million N/A
Michael Moore's SiCKO won't be going as wide this weekend as planned, only expanding into 441 theatres, and though it should do very well in those theatres, it's probably looking at under $6 million for the weekend unless it REALLY breaks out like Fahrenheit 9/11 did three years ago.
The big movie next week is Michael Bay's Transformers, so big that it can't even wait until the weekend to be released like a normal movie. No, the Paramount/DreamWorks action movie is released on Monday night (in case anyone didn't realize it) in preparation for a mammoth 4th of July week, although it will do so much business between Monday and Thursday that it might take away from its weekend business. (Without having worked on the numbers, I'd estimate around $120 to 130 million between Monday and Sunday.)
Maybe it's because I've seen Warner Bros' romantic comedy License to Wed that I'm not so bullish on it, and that will probably end up in the lower 20 million range between its Tuesday opening and Sunday.
