Weekend Recap: March 28 - 30

This weekend, 21 made a couple million over that mark. If ever there was a time to lowball the box office estimates, it was this weekend. With an estimated $23.7 million, 21 controlled the weekend with almost double the per theater average as Horton Hears a Who. It will be interesting to see how this movie holds up. I felt it was at least 30 minutes too long and critics on Rotten Tomatoes appear to agree (32% positive), but that isn’t always a predictive indicator of moviegoers. The gold standard for card movies, Rounders opened with $8.5 million and finished with only $22.9 million. 21 might be able to do better than that, but without good word of mouth, it’s hard to see 21 topping $70 million total. The only thing that is certain, however, is there will be a lot of hot-shot know-it-alls at the blackjack tables this summer as 21 did an excellent job as an infomercial for Las Vegas.

This is the second week that I’ve been overly optimistic projecting Horton Hears a Who ($17.4 million vs. $18-19 projection). Last weekend, I at least had Good Friday as an excuse. After 17 days, Robots had accumulated $87.4 million about 68% of its total. Happy Feet was up to $121.5 million, which was about 61% of its total but it had the benefit of December. If Horton were to keep on track with Robots, it will have a chance to gross over $170 million, but I’ll stick with my initial projection (here) of $160 - $170 million.

Superhero! managed what I see as a respectable open of $9.5 million. I have a hard time distinguishing the difference between The Comebacks ($5.6 million open) vs. Epic Movie ($18.6 million open). I don’t laugh at the ads so I’m genuinely surprised when any of these movies opens over $5 million. Like almost every spoof movie, expect awful box office legs. Any total over $23 million would be remarkable and I’m projecting around $21 million.

Taking the biggest dive this weekend was Meet the Browns, dropping 61% to $7.8 million. No big surprise here as Perry’s past movies have been heavily frontloaded. Stop-Loss opened in eight place with a mediocre $4.5 million. Phillippe does not have a history of big opens, add to that the poor box office performance of past Iraq war movies and the results should not be surprising. Down at thirteenth, Run Fatboy Run grossed a meager $2.4 million.

Overall, it is a disappointingly weak box office. Unless there are some surprise hits in April, 2008 will need to rely on the summer box office to bail it out.