Everyone was all over Beowulf‘s junk this weekend but I was able to see through the mist and knock it out of the park. It didn’t hit $30m, and now it will have an extremely tough time holding on to marketshare as five new films hit the theaters on Wednesday. Read on for more self-congratulation and introspective thoughts!
#1 movie predicted correctly: One Week In A Row
1. Beowulf
How about them apples? Matt Damon, a dead ringer for me, wins the sexiest man alive award and I come within an eyelash of nailing this dead on. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go play the lotto.
Result: 28.1 million (My rank: #1, $0.2m off)
2. Bee Movie
I’m actually pleased to see Bee Movie underperform just a smidge – that means less of the early adopters have friends (that they told to see it) than I’d projected. We want to keep those people isolated, they’ll send you to average flicks again and again.
Result: 14.3 million (My rank: #2, $1.7m off)
Every week in November 2006 the top twelve films grossed over $100m combined. This is the second November in 2007 to fall short of that mark. If I had to point to one reason for the down box office it would be this: They released way too many films over the summer, leaving none for the Christmas season.
Result: 13.2 million (My rank: #3, $0.9m off)
4. Fred Claus
Wow. This did fantastic given how poor the word of mouth should have been. It was as if everyone in the world decided “Ah, screw it, let’s give in to marketing.”
Result: 12.0 million (My rank: #5, $2.9m off)
This just barely broke double digits. It was left for dead. Did you see any Hoffman interviews? No? Me neither. They trotted poor Natalie Portman out but really she’s too young to know better.
Result: 10.0 million (My rank: #5, $2.6m off)
Pretty big difference between the top five and the bottom five, Dan in Real Life would have needed to double its money plus 15 percent to grab the six spot. So, yeah, it was mathematically impossible that this would finish anywhere but here. I just took advantage of that fact to look smart.
Result: 4.5 million (My rank: #6, $0.3m off)
I couldn’t be happier to be wrong on a prediction than I am here. Instead of the $10k per theater I projected it hit $20k per theater. So I was 100% wrong, but 110% happy because this is a movie I really like. I don’t want to hear crap about “I didn’t like the ending” out of you people either. Let’s all learn to appreciate something that’s not Transformers.
Result: 3.0 million (My rank: #10, $1.5m off)
The prediction here was on, the only stumbling block was No Country for Old Men reaching up and grabbing this one’s slot. That’s good though, and we’ll never hear from this one again, not even on DVD.
Result: 2.9 million (My rank: #7, $.3m off)
9. Saw 4
I take no credit for being on point here, this was easy. Of course it was going to drop about 53%, that’s just what horror films do. Did I mention there are five new releases next week?
Result: 2.3 million (My rank: #9, $0.4m off)
It didn’t do as well as I thought it would – probably something to do with the word “Cholera” right there in the title. No one wants to hear about that sort of thing.
Result: 1.9 million (My rank: #8, $0.2m off)
