Friday Analysis for May 2, 2008

Wow. I can’t say I’m completely surprised, but it’s still a bit of a shock to see Iron Man with an estimated $33.3 million on Friday. Maybe it was over a month of weekends where breaking $20 million over three days was a real accomplishment. Summer wouldn’t be quite as exciting without those mediocre Aprils. As for the weekend, Iron Man is a bit complicated being such a large gross and having over $5 million in Thursday night previews. At these levels, the estimates could be off by a million or two and that seriously affects the projection for the weekend. I remember with Matrix Reloaded, the Wednesday preview numbers were all over the map and eventually they were cut in half at the benefit of the Thursday numbers. Matrix Reloaded had Wednesday night previews estimated at $5 million, $37.5 million for Thursday and $91.8 million for the weekend. If we were to shift the grosses a day forward (such that Thursday would be a Friday), Matrix Reloaded's 3-day weekend gross (without previews) would be $103.2 million.

The optimistic projection model would use Spider-Man. It opened with $39.4 million on Friday (I believe the estimate was over $40 million) and managed an eleven percent increase on Saturday. Since the Thursday previews should alleviate much of the normal frontloading, there’s case that Iron Man will increase on Saturday. Spider-Man’s weekend was over 2.9 times its Friday gross. If Iron Man followed that trajectory, it would be around $97 million. Add in Thursday previews, and Paramount and Marvel will be able to proclaim a $100 million opening. On the other hand, let’s dump some cold water on those projections with much more pessimistic models using Spider-Man 3 and X3. It’s probably not fair to use threequels of huge franchises, but they are more recent and perhaps offer a lower bounds to Iron Man’s weekend projection. Spider-Man 3 opened with an unbelievable $59.8 million; a feat I don't see being matched for some time. It’s total weekend of $151.1 million was 2.5 times larger than its Friday. X-Men: The Last Stand was even more frontloaded with a weekend less than 2.3 times its Friday ($45.1 million Friday, $102.8 million 3-day weekend). Note that X3 opened on Memorial Day weekend. Using Spider-Man 3, Iron Man would make it into the $80 million range, but that may be overly conservative.

Even with great reviews, it’s unlikely Iron Man will have great legs given the track record of previous comic book blockbusters. I doubt it will match Spider-Man’s run of almost 3.6 times its record-breaking weekend. I would expect a total run closer to 2.5 times its weekend (I suppose you would include the previews in the weekend for the sake of this calculation). That would put its total in the low to mid $200 million range. However, probably best to wait for the weekend grosses to get a good sense of where Iron Man is headed.

Let’s not forget about Made of Honor, which came in with an estimated $5.6 million. This is disappointment only in comparison to Iron Man. Without Iron Man, it’d be a decent number one (and this summer would be off to the worst start ever). I didn’t see any prediction of $20 million, so I’m going to mark this open as meeting expectations. The reviews are really horrible (12% on Rotten Tomatoes), but that didn’t stop Monster-In-Law (16%) from finishing its run with $82.9 million with a weekend open of $23.1 million. Monster in Law opened on May 13, 2005 and managed a Saturday increase of 24%. We'll find out tomorrow if Made of Honor can keep up with that pace. Although next weekend’s What Happens in Vegas might appear to offer competition, I think there are significant differences in the two movies demographic (age) and genre (more romance than comedy).

Overall box office was down 28% from last year, but that's not a big surprise given Spider-Man 3 opened. It was up a big 67% from 2006. If 2008 really needs an ego boost, it could look at 2005 where the top 10 took in just $25.9 million. That's a 93% increase and Iron Man alone handily outgrosses 2005's entire top 10 gross.