I feel good about lowballing Ratatouille but bad about highballing Live Free or Die Hard. Oddly, my word document accepts highballing as a word, but not lowballing. Oh spellcheck, you are a mysterious creature.
#1 movie predicted correctly: Nine Weeks In A Row
1. Ratatouille
Everyone will laud this result – missing the fact that it’s the lowest Pixar debut in nine years. Dare I use the slump word when it comes to this summer? Aw, what the hell, someone’s got to get it started. We’re slumping!
Result: $47.2 million (My rank: #1, $7.6m off)
If you add in the the $15m of box office from Wednesday and Thursday then I’m a little under. You won’t do that of course, and you shouldn’t. It was a prediction based on love and those are the worst kind.
Result: $33.1 million (My rank: #2, $9.7m off)
It really deserved more of a thrashing. But at $60m total it’s looking like it will lose right around $125m and join Pluto Nash as one of the biggest disasters in studio history. Also, it means no John Goodman Almighty, something I guarantee you they were pondering.
Result: $15.1 million (My rank: #3, $.7m off)
4. 1408
There’s two in a row with less than a million dollar variance. 1408 chugged past the $40m mark this weekend and I think it’s primed for a decent international showing too. Look for Harvey Weinstein to scoop up every supernatural thriller script in the free world starting Monday.
Result: $10.6 million (My rank: #4, $.7m off)
I really wish they released DVD sales because the chance of success here hinges completely those dollars. It’s sitting $80m or so in the hole if you include the production budget plus the estimated marketing budget (anyone remember the NBA finals?). That’s four million DVDs needed, and I have no idea how many the average film makes.
Result: $9.0 million (My rank: #6, $1.4m off)
6. Knocked Up
You can’t blame me for thinking this one would do a smidge better. At this point Apatow is calling the studio and telling them he wants servants sent over. And he’ll get them too.
Result: $7.4 million (My rank: #5, $.4m off)
Three comedies sticking in the top ten. Four if you count Sicko.
Result: $6.1 million (My rank: #7, $.4m off)
Wow I was really off here, but the good news is that it just left Spider-Man 3 in the dust.
Result: $5.0 million (My rank: #10, $1.8m off)
9. Sicko
Hmmm, why didn’t I have Sicko ranked? That’s a mystery to me too. Oh, well it only had 440 theaters so it’s sort of reasonable that I left it off. Aww, who am I kidding, I just made a mental error. I’m still recommending this one by the way, even though we’ve gotten off on the wrong Oracle foot.
Result: $4.5 million (My rank: Not Rankedf)
10. Evening
I had the money dialed in here. Whatever they spent on commercials was way too much as this was the opposite of what people wanted to see in a summer film.
Result: $3.5 million (My rank: #8, $.1m off)
